The nature writing of Swedish author/biologist Stefan Edman (1946-) is shaped by a mainstream political agenda. Simultaneously it gives voice to aesthetic and spiritual reflections on nature's processes and on environmental change. This paper focuses on how Edman's texts function, through rhetoric, scientific clarification and ethical positioning, as both an integral part of an established political context, and as a reflective and critical instance, addressing environmental issues.

Edman has for several years upheld a position at the center of Swedish politics; apart from being one of the major nature writers of this and the last century, he is the author of governmental investigations, and closely associated to the Social Democratic Party and one of the originators behind "the green welfare state" during Prime Minister Goran Persson's reign (1996-2006). In this paper analyses are made of Edman's nature writing and his work is  contextualized with the intent to demonstrate the specific political significance of the texts' different modes, with particular attention taken to the key concepts 'limited resources' and 'sustainable development'.

It is interesting to note that the Social Democrats are the political platform Edman have chosen to forward his message. The effects of this is that the public areas in which he acts as a writer are closely associated with a political power that eagerly supported (e.g.) the industrial exploitation of forests. This complex relationship is based on a merging of, rather than a collision of, two discourses â€" the ethical stance of nature writing, and a political discourse that calls for change of the existing social structures. To some extent, this merging of discourses is uniquely Swedish due to the fact that the Social Democratic Party during much of the 1900s and the first years of the 2000s were basically monopolistic in their exercise of power. For the environmental writer Edman this meant he had to work inside of the given power structures, and utter his criticism of the prevailing environmental agenda within the (then) governing party.

Stefan Edman is also active in 'the Fraternity Movement', a Christian formation closely connected to the Social Democrats. His Christian faith finds its way into his texts as a spiritual feeling and awareness. The awareness relies on the Christian idea of a certain human responsibility for the earth, but also in the Reformed churches often radical political agenda in the Northern European secular societies. The type of nature writing created in connection to these religious and political manifestations is challenging 'recognizing the need to transform society's way of life' but yet not so challenging or questioning that they may be perceived as problematic in relation to political power.

The texts of Edman that I will pay attention to in this paper are drawn from his later work and provide examples of how he is using rhetoric and multimodal effects to combine environmental expertise with political activism and spiritual experience. 'Gläntor'[Glades] of 1997 takes as its starting point the Swede as a forest dweller and the importance of the forest glade as a natural room for contemplation and of being a place where ecological richness is given space to thrive. 'Västerut' [Westbound] (2000) has a similar theme, while 'Solvarv' [Solar Cycle] (1993) is based on seasonal wanderings and thus contemplates nature's circular processes. I will further explore into texts which more explicitly describe the spiritual experiences made by the protagonist on nature walks, such as 'Förundran' [Amazement] (2006), 'Darwin och Vår Herre' [Darwin and our Lord] (2009) 'Jorden och själens överlevnad' [The Earth and the Survival of the Soul] (2008) and the essay 'Guds hjärtslag i skapelsen' [God's heartbeat heard in the creation] in the anthology 'Gå med Gud' (1999).

The theoretical basis of my paper includes Ursula Heise' 'Sense of Place and Sense of Planet' and Satterfield and Slovic (eds.) 'What is Nature Worth', as well as models of discursive analysis.

The nature writing of Swedish author/biologist Stefan Edman (1946 –) is shaped by a mainstream political agenda. Simultaneously it gives voice to aesthetic and spiritual reflections on nature’s processes and on environmental change. This paper focuses on how Edman’s texts function, through rhetoric, scientific clarification and ethical positioning, as both an integral part of an established political context, and as a reflective and critical instance, addressing environmental issues. Edman has for several years upheld a position at the center of Swedish politics; apart from being one of the major nature writers of this and the last century, he is the author of governmental investigations, and closely associated to the Social Democratic Party and one of the originators behind ‘the green welfare state’ during Prime Minister Goran Persson’s reign (1996-2006). In this paper analyses are made of Edman’s nature writing and his work is  contextualized with the intent to demonstrate the specific political significance of the texts’ different modes, with particular attention taken to the key concepts ‘limited resources’ and ‘sustainable development’. The theoretical basis of my paper includes Ursula Heise’s ‘Sense of Place and Sense of Planet’ and Satterfield and Slovic (eds.) What’s Nature Worth’, as well as models of discursive analysis.

Being a true, border-crossing genre, the field guides to birds provides a hitherto unexplored field for the scholar of intermediality. In the field guide descriptive prose is combined with images, maps, and transcriptions of birdsong. The images show a variety of attitudes towards birds as objects of art, ranging from very straight-forward paintings modelled on stuffed specimens, to vivid free-hand sketches capturing the birds in their natural habitat. The stances of the texts also differ – from anthropocentric views on the life of certain birds, to more or less scientific micro-articles. A certain, very peculiar form of transcription, offers the different examples of the author to transfer bird-song to text, a try that sometimes approach the domains of concrete poetry. This presentation primarily focuses on two Swedish field guides: Erik Rosenbergs Fåglar i Sverige (The Birds of Sweden), and Lars Jonsson’s Fåglar i Europa (The Birds of Europe), and explores the contextual differences and similarities that exist between them. Theoretical background for this presentation is the contemporary field of ecocriticism, as specified by scholars like Jonathan Bate, Terry Gifford, Cheryll Glotfelty, and Greg Garrard. Articles and longer studies by Thomas J. Lyon will also be referred to, as will intermedial studies on the connection between image and text by, among others, J. Hillis Miller, Jon Lykke, and W. J. T. Mitchell. Certain historical and anthropological aspects of birdwatcher’s community are taken into account by a reference to the essays of Mark Cocker.

During the ‘70s and ‘80s the environmental movement grew strong in Sweden – mainly due to the results of an ongoing discussion concerning nuclear power, which resulted in a referendum in 1981. This occasion coincided with the ending of fifteen years of left wing domination of the Swedish literary debate and production. Politically, though, the leftist activist authors – often of a Maoist or Leninist creed – became more engaged in questions concerning sustainable development, and national and international questions of pollution and unbalanced ecology. This new sphere of political debates and activity were taken up by poets that had made their marks as progressive in the 60s and 70s. One of them is Göran Palm (1931 - ), who in 1984 published the first part of his book length blank-verse poem, Sweden: A Winter’s Tale.The poem is inspired by Heinrich Heine’s 1844 epic poem Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen; a text saturated by Heine’s own experiences of the repressive German policies that had forced him into exile.

This paper will use Palm’s poem that was completed in 2005, as a paradigmatic example of the ecological turn in Swedish Poetry of the late 20th century. The methodological and theoretical base of the paper is the discussions about an ecocritical literary criticism, sprung from the environmental movements in Western Europe and in the US. Main thinkers of this theory that I will use as a tool for my historical interpretations are (e. g.) Jonathan Bate, Terry Gifford, and Sheryl Glotfelty.

This presentation takes as its staring point two kinds of intermedial genres: the autobiographical graphic novel, with a male protagonist, and films based on comic books. The graphic novel has been studied, in different perspectives, for example in Baetens (2001); film adaptations based on comicshave been scrutinized by (e. g.) Christiansen (2000), Hofstede (1991), and Hughes (2003). This presentation focuses on the American author Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical comics (illustrated, among others, by Robert Crumb) and the film, directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, based on Pekars’s work, American Splendor (2003). The autobiographical comics or graphic novels are often associated with a typically gendered (male) kind of introspection, reflectivity, and self-analysis. In most cases the autobiographical content focuses on the misgivings, the social phobias, and the exaggerated dullness of the life of the protagonist. The lacks in social skills are in most cases manifested by an unusual interest in the limitations of the own, male body, and sometimes by very self-conscious and deliberate antiaesthetics. The lifestyle and physical looks of the protagonist, as it is depicted in image, and told in words, are thus connected to anti-sociality, neuroticism, and to different kinds of physical deformity (illusionary, of course), a slight overweight and illness. An analogy is hereby made between the social and psychological factors and the male dysfunctional body, an analogy that is underlined by the intermedial qualities of the genres. This analogy is even further amplified in the film adaptation by the studied use of mise-en-scène, the use of the actors’ persona, special effects and, in this case, the fact that the autobiographical subject (Harvey Pekar) makes an appearance in the movie “as himself”. Even though the male body is shown as recalcitrant, passive and cancerous, it is simultaneously used as a sign of resistance against the norms and standards of society, a kind of “anti-ecological physical entity”, as I will have it. Indepth studies of the representations of the male body, that my presentation in part is based on, is found in Ervø och Johansson (2003, two volumes).