This thesis investigates the relationship between the “New Negro” moment of the early twentieth-century America and the Old World of Europe, as represented in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Jessie Fauset’s There is Confusion (1924), and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928). In the nineteenth century, Europe functioned as a symbol of freedom, education and art in the African-American literary imagination. It is my contention that these notions are questioned in the novels of Johnson, Fauset and Larsen.

The episodes set in Europe are seen as a lens through which the role of the African-American in Western civilization can be studied. The African-American artist/protagonists are seen as cultural intermediaries, who bridge Euro-American and African-American culture, national and folk culture, high and low culture. Their performances are here understood as crucially related to the geo-cultural symbolism of Europe. Performance is considered as a vital part of African-American identity formation, tallying with the double consciousness that DuBois identified as characteristic of the African-American. I suggest that in these novels, the trope of performance (based on double consciousness) is used to critique the notions of race and culture, whereby conceptions of racial essentialism and cultural authenticity are questioned. The novels themselves are also considered as performative acts that helped form the concept of a New Negro in the 1920s.

To approach the social meaning of these novels, they can be contrasted with vernacular African-American art forms, here represented by music, such as blues, ragtime and jazz.Music, which plays an important part in all the novels, is analyzed in relation to the European-derived novel. This is a discussion in which the notion of authenticity surfaces, with regard to what constitutes a black identity and a “black text.” I argue that music here functions as an index of cultural identity and a motif through which this identity could be re-imagined. However, instead of offering simple affirmations of a shared black identity, the novels initiate discussions of what can and cannot signify “blackness.” The texts of Fauset and Larsen are particularly ambiguous in this respect, indicating the authors’ sensitiveness to the combined limitations of race and gender.

Det musikdramatiska berättandet har idag lierat sig med nya medier och teknologier. Resultatet av detta är att gränsen mellan lyssnaren och den aktive kompositören håller på att luckras upp. I musiken till datorspelen finner vi ett musikdramatiskt berättande som genom interaktiviteten frångår det traditionella berättandets linjära narratologi. Att komponera musik som både är intressant och samtidigt flexibelt rättar sig efter en publik som fysiskt medverkar till att skapa musiken är kanske vår tids största utmaning för nu verksamma musiker, tonsättare och dramatiker.

Money and myths: An exploration of models of value in early 19th-century literature and texts on economy

The main aim of this paper is to show how the concept of money could be treated in literary and in economic writings in the Swedish Age of Romanticism. Three texts — an early poem by Erik Johan Stagnelius and two contemporary essays in economic theory — serve as examples of how, and for which purpose, qualitative and quantitative values could be negotiated in these writings. The study shows that, in the poem, money and profit are treated as inconsistent with such qualitative values as freedom, justice, and joy, whereas the two theoretical essays both make use of different strategies of fictionalization to deal with qualitative and quantitative values in one and the same narration. In this paper, the fictionalization strategies are linked to the paracapitalist approach often to be found in the political and economic theories in the Romantic period. From the perspective of economy-discourse history, an attempt is made to link the two essays to the German economist and philosopher Adam Müller and his Versuche einer neuen Theorie des Geldes (1816).

This paper analyses the characters Mina and Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, showing how they are juxtaposed in terms of femininity. By using feminist criticism and the concepts of the angel in the house, monstrous femininity, and the virgin/whore dichotomy, this paper explores how Mina represents the self-sacrificing, supportive, and wifely angel in the house, while Lucy represents the sexual, disobedient, and powerful monstrous female. This is analyzed through Mina’s interactions with the men, as well as through her view on femininity, and through Lucy’s interactions with the men and with Mina. This paper then explores how these differing gender roles lead to different outcomes for the two women. Mina is excluded but is able to be purified from vampirism while still alive. In contrast, Lucy, being a threat to British Victorian femininity, has to be killed and mutilated before her memory can be purified. How well the women fit into the male community’s view of the Victorian female ideal, with Mina fitting it the best, is found to be the reason for why Lucy suffers a worse fate than Mina.

Through a liberal feminist perspective, this essay investigates the unconventional marital views of the fictional character Elizabeth Bennet. These are analyzed and compared to the traditional marital opinions of the novel's social environment. Moreover, the historical context is important in understanding the marital views in Pride and Prejudice, because the novel was written at a time when the views toward marriage changed significantly. This paper argues that Elizabeth's behavior, expressed opinions and rejections of Mr. Collins's and Mr. Darcy's proposals depict liberal feminist ideas of marriage. The literary review supports the notion that there are two contrasting attitudes toward marriage in Pride and Prejudice: the traditional view and the liberal feminist view. The thorough examination of Elizabeth Bennet's character strongly suggests that she represents the unconventional view of marriage, while characters such as Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet, and Charlotte Lucas voice the traditional view of marriage. Furthermore, an analysis of Mr. Darcy's attraction toward Elizabeth indicates that it was Elizabeth's very unconventionality that made Mr. Darcy fall in love with her.

Med utgångspunkt i barnbokens bilder analyseras och diskuteras temat döden och dess gestaltning. Syftet är att genom moderna teorier och metoder visa hur ett svårt tema gestaltats i ett antal moderna bilderböcker. Tillvägagångssättet i uppsatsen är analys av text, berättande, narration och ikonotext, med en efterföljande diskussion. Uppsatsen prövar olika moderna teorier och metoder för att resonera och problematisera gestaltningen av döden i barnbokens bilder. I uppsatsen redovisas hur en illustration kan innehålla visuella luckor skapade av illustratören, såväl som en text innehåller verbala luckor. De visuella luckorna påverkar tolkningen av ikonotexten – bilderbokens egentliga text – och påverkar därmed även betydelsen av ursprungstexten. Resultatet visar att de allra senaste utkomna bilderböckerna utmanar gränserna för bilderböcker för barn, men att de genom öppningar i texten, blir tillgängliga för barnläsaren.

Utgångspunkten för denna uppsats är att utifrån moderna teorier och metoder belysa illustrationernas betydelse för ikonotexten. Författaren har använt två versioner av Astrid Lindgrens Sunnanäng - ¨Sunnanäng¨ i Sunnanäng (1959) och Sunnanäng (2003) – för att belysa området. Båda berättelserna har samma text, men olika illustratörer, Ilon Wikland och Marit Törnqvist. Tillvägagångssättet författaren har använt i uppsatsen är separerade textanalyser, bildanalyser och analyser av ikonotexten utifrån dennes ¨läsning¨ av de två olika versionerna av Sunnanäng. Författaren har prövat olika moderna teorier och metoder för att resonera och problematisera illustrationernas betydelse för ikonotexten. I uppsatsen visar författaren att en illustration kan innehålla visuella luckor skapade av illustratören, såväl som en text innehåller verbala luckor. De visuella luckorna påverkar tolkningen av ikonotexten – bilderbokens egentliga text – och påverkar därmed även betydelsen av ursprungstexten. Författaren beskriver och visar i uppsatsen hur illustrationerna på flertalet sätt expanderat texten i ¨Sunnanäng¨ i Sunnanäng från 1959 till Sunnanäng 2003 och därmed skapat helt nya betydelser för ikonotexten.

Romanerna som ligger till grund för uppsatsens analys är Thomas Bailey Aldrich The story of a bad boy, Mark Twains Tom Sawyers och Huckleberry Finn samt Richmal Cromptons Just William. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka de litterära gestalter som tar sig skepnad i företeelsen "bad boys" och de frågor som ställs i uppsatsen är: Hur och varför uppkom företeelsen "bad boys"? Hur växte genren "bad boys" fram? Vad karaktäriserar "bad boys" företeelsen? Uppsatsens narratologiska utgångspunkter bygger bland annat på Mieke Bals teori om fabelns och de textanalytiska begrepp som Maria Nikolajeva redogör för: tid och plats, författarens och läsarens föreställning av författaren, samtid och tidsperspektiv. Uppsatsen tar även stöd i R.W. Connell, John Stephens och Kenneth B. Kidds teorier. Uppsatsen visar att "bad boys"-genren har sitt ursprung under en period då bilden av mannen var under förändring och romaner för pojkar blev allt mer robusta."Bad boys" – genren karaktäriseras av driftiga pojkgestalter som delvis formar sin identitet i pojkgänget. "Bad-boys"- genren är även en konsekvens av de ändrade förhållandena för unga pojkar i USA. Dessa pojkar sågs ofta som små vandaler och det är dessa som återspeglas i "bad-boys" genren.

The aim of this essay is to investigate Face Theory, from a gender perspective, in the 19^th century’s novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen with the help of Speech Act Theory including direct Speech and indirect Speech. The special focuses of this investigation are if Elizabeth has a stereotypical use of FTAs strategies for different genders.

Syftet med den här studien är att ta reda på hur symboler och intertextualitet kan tolkas i romanen Älskade, skriven av Toni Morrison. Metoden som använts har varit närläsning, där texten har granskats ingående för att finna symboler. Även en läslogg har upprättats, där reflektioner angående symbolerna och intertextualitet nedtecknats. Utifrån detta och med hjälp av passande litteratur har symbolerna tolkats i de sammanhang de dyker upp i. Symbolerna har även förknippats med romanens karaktärer för att få fram deras personlighet. Resultatet av detta visar att två teman har hittats: förtryckta känslor och längtan efter något annat. Teman som förknippas med den situation som slavarna levde under, när romanens handling utspelar sig i 1800-talets Amerika, då slaveriet var mycket utbrett i Södern. Nutid i romanen är 1874, med analepser som sträcker sig upp till 25 år tillbaka i tiden. Intertextualiteter som har framkommit har tolkats från författarnas egna litterära bagage. Det som framkommer är att det är mycket i romanen som ekar från andra romaner och filmer. Omvänt är det också en del som tyder på att andra texter och filmer är influerade av Älskade. Detta medför att romanen sätts in i ett större perspektiv.

This thesis discusses different challenges of mediating literature in textbooks. The study is based on a critical analysis of the textbook BRUS as well as other textbooks. BRUS displays evident and pas- tichelike influences from postmodern culture, features that are still unusual in textbooks. In my research therefore I ask: Which innovative as well as traditional features can be discerned in the BRUS material, and how can they be explained? Which notions of literature are represented by BRUS? What pedagogical challenges are expressed in BRUS? The result indicates several nontraditional features. For examplehow BRUS introduces literature to the reader through a postmodern discourse in which high culture and low culture are mixed. The selection of genres in BRUS contains a relatively high proportion of nonfiction literature, and literature that is considered as low culture. BRUS uses a significant large number of writing assignments which demand different creative performances. The purpose is presumably to engage the students in the process of constructing literary meaning by presenting contemporary literature that actually matters to young people. However, the intellectual operations lack analytical depth and are focused on describing contextual features which sometimes are tenuously connected to the literature. My conclusion is that BRUS initiates a variation of fruitful literary ideas in a pedagogical context. The problem is the lack of a critical filter and pedagogical metadiscussions in which BRUS for instance discusses what functions the study of literature might fill in today’s media landscape. In my opinion, such questions shouldbe in focus in a postmodern textbook.

The purpose of the thesis is to identify the dominant legitimations of literature study in five literature textbooks for the upper secondary school in Sweden and how these legitimations are realized textually and visually. Focusing on paratexts (covers and preface), text–image relations, the representation of authorship and genre the analysis draws theoretically and methodologically upon multimodality, discourse analysis and genre theory. The result indicates several similar legitimations: the study of literature is associated with personal growth, pleasure and how history affects the present. It also shows how visual resources as well as specific voices are used to underpin interpersonal relations in order to convey the legitimations. However the legitimations are realized differently in textbooks with different disposition. In predominantly chronologically organized textbooks the legitimations emphasize images depicting historical artifacts, the cultural value of the authorship and genre discussions. Thematically organized textbooks concentrate on legitimations concerning contemporary literature and images, identification and the interplay of the reader and the text. One conclusion is that albeit all textbooks in this research are intended for the theoretical programs at the upper secondary school the textbooks convey different discourses of literature and thus provide different conditions for the teaching of literature which raise the question of equivalence. A second conclusion is that the interplay between the textbook author and the reader is emphasized although there is a lack of critical and analytical perspective. For example there are generally few references to contemporary theory, and male/female authorships are treated unequally. All in all the textbooks seem to be more concerned with convincing students, in text and images, to read literature than actually provide them with substantial analytical tools.

I denna uppsats analyseras Nancy Horans debutroman Kärleken till Frank med narratologiska begrepp. Analysen utgår från Gérard Genettes narratologiska system och är indelad i tre huvudområden; tempus, modus och röst. Syftet med uppsatsen är att, genom en strukturalistisk analys, öka förståelsen för romanen, dess berättarteknik och stil. Frågeställningar som behandlas är bland annat; Hur behandlar tid i berättelsen? Hur ser fokalisationen ut i romanen? Deltar berättaren som en karaktär i romanen, eller är den dold? Uppsatsen inriktar sig alltså på studiet av berättarkonsten, narrationen i Kärleken till Frank.

Lars Gustafsson’s The American Girl’s Sundays (2006) is a welcome change to tales based in true crime, which often focus on the predominantly male murderer or serial killer instead of on the predominantly female victim. The verse novel is also part of a larger countertrend resisting the hype accompanying killers, meanwhile paying little to no attention to the victim and what her life was and could have been. Gustafsson’s narrative, inspired by the murder of Colleen Reed in 1999, is narrated by the fictionalised victim herself. This article explores how the interweaving of Gustafssonian elements affects the narrative voice.

If restorative nostalgia concentrates on national past and future and reflective nostalgia on individual memory (Boym 2001), Lars Gustafsson’s “Where the Alphabet Has Two Hundred Letters” does neither. This article argues that Gustafsson’s treatment of the past landscape is metanostalgic, in the sense that nostalgia is a theme and a means, rather than a sentiment, and that the way his tropic reinvention deals with nostalgia differs from other uses. Though the poem partakes in the pastoral tradition, it is less concerned with this mode and more concerned with the notion of ‘effect’, of which Gustafsson has written extensively. Gustafsson has also elaborated on the aspects of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, notions that are used to define and extend the poetic landscape and the speaker’s position in, and relation to, it. His poetic landscape encompasses the extremes of continents near and far, but also landscapes temporally removed, which may hold a different status in terms of their impact on ‘effect’, a status that is then not hinging on the obvious hierarchies of traditional nostalgia.

This paper explores the relationship between the image and the truthful representation of self, landscape, and memory for Swedish, particularly expatriate, poets. The prevalence of childhood imagery in the works of Swedish poets Lars Gustafsson and Tomas Tranströmer - and in my own work - is discussed in its relation to landscapes past. Writing to salvage moments, images, people, and selves from oblivion is likely to involve some form of revisionism, to permit some fictionalising of the past. This allows for the other truth to be spoken, the emotional truth rather than the historical one. In the autobiographical space and time of the writing, moments are relived and outcomes enunciated which could not have occurred at the time. Few would argue that a truth is universal after postmodernism, but even fewer, perhaps, would care to admit to lying. This paper explores how the image permits a poem to function as a metaphor in which slivers of truth come together. In the space and time of the poem, empirical and emotional truths can coexist.

Uppsatsen syfte är att göra ett skrivmoment i en högstadieklass där eleverna ska skriva en berättelse baserat på fanfiction och deras personliga intressen. Texten innehåller teoretiska utgångspunkter såsom skrivprocessteori, receptionsteorier och didaktiska teorier och perspektiv som jag ska kunna använda till mitt undervisningsmoment. Den innehåller även tre stora undersökningar från tre olika verk. Två av de tre undersökningarna ingår i avhandlingar där alla är peer reviewed, alltså godkända av någon sorts handledare. Den tredje är en bok, Författande fans, som på många sätt är central för min uppsats eftersom den behandlar begreppet fanfiction. Jag har inte själv gjort någon undersökning i uppsatsen eftersom tiden inte skulle ha räckt till det – jag skulle i så fall fått genomföra mitt undervisningsmoment i praktiken. Därför har jag använt mig av undersökningarna från de två avhandlingarna samt Författande fans när jag motiverat mitt undervisningsmoment i slutet av uppsatsen, som på sätt och vis är mitt resultat. I den sista diskussionsdelen diskuterar jag forskningsbakgrund, undersökningar och resultat och försöker att se på fanfiction och min skrivuppgift utifrån olika perspektiv.

This paper takes a cultural materialist approach in analyzing the hegemonic purpose of using Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in American education. Ideas from critical race theory and Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, are used to reveal obfuscated aspects of Mockingbird’s narrative. These aspects have been repurposed to fit a Eurocentric palate, and have let the book achieve success under the guise of being a progressive and multiculturalist work. Mockingbird’s narration, marked by childlike innocence, has been used to obfuscate Eurocentric ignorance of racial and economic inequality. The text has also been used to divert blame from those in power onto those oppressed by a hegemonic system. Racism is in Mockingbird inaccurately described as an individual moral issue, rather than a system of discrimination which is deeply ingrained in every aspect of U.S. society. The liberal moderate ideology which informs Atticus character has historically been ignored due to his unquestionable, near-mythical position as a moral role model. The paper finds that Mockingbird has been used as part of a greater Eurocentric narrative which positions the Civil Rights Movement as a white movement of moral improvement.

This essay argues that the protagonist of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins can be considered to be a female character in a male form. By applying feminist literary criticism this essay map out the traditional gender roles in society along with the traditional gender roles in Middle Earth in order to investigate Bilbo’s female characteristics, the similarities between him and women in patriarchal society as well as the female imagery present in The Hobbit. The results show that Bilbo Baggins’ characteristics such as emotionality, sensitivity and compassion corresponds more to the traditional female gender norms than that of the male gender norms. The results also indicate the similarities between Bilbo’s experiences and that of women in a patriarchal society, such as the attention to being respectable and difficulties working in a male-dominated field.