Akademisk avhandling--Stockholms högskola. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement, inserted. Bibliography: p. 385-392.

Akademisk avhandling - Upsala. / "Litteraturförteckning": p. [419]-422.

Akademisk avhandling--Stockholms högskola. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement, inserted. Bibliography: p. 385-392.

The present Ph.D. dissertation proceeds from poetry on the theme of the Virgin Mary which blossomed for several decades during the Romantic era and is dedicated to the use of its virgin and maternal themes in the work of C.J.L. Almqvist and P.D.A. Atterbom. The first chapter discusses Almqvist's description of the perfect complementary unity of male and female - and divine and human - in his juvenile work Murnis (1819). In this sexually explicit work, theology and religious experience is eroticized while sexuality is sacralized. In Amorina (1822), a burgeoning transformation of Almqvist's "wholeness" vision can be observed. While wholeness can only be achieved through the perfect union of man and woman in Murnis, Amorina emerges as a perfect figure in and of herself. In the second chapter, the figure of Tintomara in Drottningens juvelsmycke (1835) is analyzed. In this novel, the dream of the merging of "twoness" into "oneness" seems to have been abandoned in favour of an experiment, wherein the unity of masculinity and femininity is realized in one single individual, the androgynous Tintomara. Despite the fact that the novel's androgynous idea is formulated with direct reference to Plato's Symposium, the significance of Jakob Böhme's speculations on androgyny are also emphasized here. The third chapter deals with the poetry about Mary written by Almqvist, especially Isidoros av Tadmor and Marjam (1839). Almqvist's image of Mary is characterized in terms of "perfection" and "complexity". In Marjam, this complexity is expressed both through the drama's upholding of the paradoxical content of the dogma of the Virgin Mary and the main theme of the double drama, the tension between the earthly and the eschatological family. The fourth and fifth chapters of this dissertation are dedicated to the maternal theme in the work of P.D.A. Atterbom. I proceed from the hypothesis that the transformations which the figure of Mary undergoes reflect a tension between Romantic syncretism and classic Christianity. I analyze four texts by Atterbom in which this conflict is particularly apparent. In Atterbom's prose draft for his fairy play Fågel blå (1818), as in his sonnets dedicated to Mary (1817-18), I discern a shift away from Romantic syncretism and toward more Biblical patterns. In the fairy play Lycksalighetens ö (1824-27), this tension emerges anew in the two Nyx epiphanies in the piece. The elegy "Ave Maria" (1831) comprises the clearest example of the shift in Atterbom's writing toward classical Mariology. In the conclusion, Almqvist's and Atterbom's respective thematic use of Mary - where she is portrayed as a complex, transgressive figure - is contrasted with an early example of Swedish Biedermeier poetry, Carl von Zeipel's "Jesus Christus. Evangeliska romanser" (1822), where Mary is placed in the context of the little, idyllic family. / digitalisering@umu

Thèse Uppsala : Univ., 2004. / Résumé en anglais "The romantic church"

Vilhelm Fredrik Palmblad (1788–1852) was one of the leading men of the Romantic circle in Uppsala, known as the “New school” or the “fosforists”. Among the men in this group, Palmblad was the one devoting most attention to the novel, and he broke sharply with the dominating negative view of the genre. This thesis examines Palmblad’s conception of the novel genre, using his critical writings as well as his own novels. Palmblad holds that the novel originates from the chivalrous romances of the Middle Ages. Like these romances, the novel is, and should be, a “wonderful story”, dealing with adventures and heroic deeds in service of God and womanhood. It is of decisive importance that the novel is elevated from mundane life: the stature of the characters and the story are crucial criteria of value. Palmblad also emphasizes the importance of portraying characters and their circumstances in an individualized way. Influenced in particular by Walter Scott, Palmblad gradually opens his conception of the novel towards depictions of everyday life. However, this opening is surrounded by restrictions showing that Palmblad still adheres to his Romantic aesthetics. The study challenges the previous understanding of Palmblad’s development from Romantic to Realist. Instead, the shifts of his aesthetics towards a stronger connection with reality ought to be understood as endeavours to preserve the ideals of the Romantic novel at a time when they were contested. From a wider horizon, the study also questions the prevalent understanding of the transition from the Romantic to the realistic novel. The aesthetic contrast between “Romanticism” and “Realism” ought to be played down. The truly important opposition among the Swedish novelists of the time is rather a political conflict between conservatives and liberals.

This dissertation explores the intimate relationship between irony and romantic subjectivity, by drawing on feminist psychoanalytical theory, via an examination of the shiftings of irony, and humor, in the works of the Swedish romanticist P. D. A. Atterbom (1790–1855). It looks at the critical role played by irony in the formation of Romantic subjectivity, and explores irony’s potential to undermine dualistically gendered notions of subject-object relations. For Atterbom, irony is an aesthetic concept closely related to drama, informed not only by German Romantic-ironic theorists such as Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, but also by the works of Shakespeare, Ludwig Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. The thesis follows the shiftings of Romantic irony in Atterbom’s major literary texts: the cycle of poems Blommorna [The Flowers] (1811), where the Ovidian transformations are used metafictively to play with the relation between poet, poem, and reader; and the literary satire Rimmarbandet [The Rhyme Band] (1810), which, inspired by Tieck’s Der Gestiefelte Kater (1797), uses the metafictive theatre-in-the-theatre motif, as well as carnivalesque and grotesque motifs to expose contrived theatricality and homosocial misogyny in the prevailing culture. The dynamic between the satirist’s subject and the attacked object is a polarized power struggle, where revolt is followed by submission. In this respect, Romantic satire is here conservative. In the fairy tale play Lycksalighetens ö [Island of Felicity] (1824–27), tragedy’s irony is a dialectic between the ideal and the real that strives to create both inner and outer renewal. The play reaches out metafictively to the reader and turns her/him into the poet of a new version of the fairy tale. The reading/writing process inscribed in the work thus becomes a form of renewal and liberation from grief, and old, patriarchal gender roles. Finally, the humorous, unfinished idyll Fågel Blå [Blue Bird] (1814, 1818, 1858) is a work in many pieces, a fragment, a sketch and a non finito that together stages a restorative creative process, where the reader is asked to take part in joining together the scattered parts of Blue Bird itself. To conclude, irony is a feature of Romanticism, which makes the Romantic, literary subject relational and dialogical, open to its Other, and herein lies a form of ethics and an escape from a conventional, patriarchal notion of the self. I discuss this with Julia Kristeva’s theories on how subjectivity changes when it becomes poetic and Jessica Benjamin’s Winnicott-influenced theory of how play can offer a way out from patriarchy’s strict gender roles. The shiftings of irony in Atterbom’s work show a development from the satirical subject, where an aggressive form of self-assertion conceals a lack of individuality – via tragedy’s painstaking efforts to integrate repressed aspects of the self – to the idyll’s more harmonious subject, who has the capacity to laugh at him/herself and see both the grotesque in the holy, and the holy in the grotesque.

<p>The essay deals with the idea of melancholia as an exclusively male feeling associated with geniality and eminence, as it is shown in the letters of three romantic men. These letters were written by the philosopher Benjamin Höijer, the poet P.D.A Atterbom, and the musician Adolf Fredrik Lindblad to their female friends Henriette von Rosenstein, Euphrosyne, and Malla Silfverstolpe. Romantic masculinity is a neglected topic that is in need of further research. An essential characteristic of romanticism is the appreciation of feeling. According to the traditional dualistic gender division though, women represented sensibility, while men instead were associated with reason. Melancholia can therefore be considered as a way for romantic men to develop a specifically male feeling of gravity and gloominess and keep it separated from a more light-hearted female sensibility. It also maintains the partition between a masculine public and a feminine private sphere, since melancholia can be seen as a more important public sensibility related to the whole of humanity, while female sorrow is restricted to personal circumstances. Though melancholia is often seen as a negative feeling, it is kept as a male privilege.</p>

The essay deals with the idea of melancholia as an exclusively male feeling associated with geniality and eminence, as it is shown in the letters of three romantic men. These letters were written by the philosopher Benjamin Höijer, the poet P.D.A Atterbom, and the musician Adolf Fredrik Lindblad to their female friends Henriette von Rosenstein, Euphrosyne, and Malla Silfverstolpe. Romantic masculinity is a neglected topic that is in need of further research. An essential characteristic of romanticism is the appreciation of feeling. According to the traditional dualistic gender division though, women represented sensibility, while men instead were associated with reason. Melancholia can therefore be considered as a way for romantic men to develop a specifically male feeling of gravity and gloominess and keep it separated from a more light-hearted female sensibility. It also maintains the partition between a masculine public and a feminine private sphere, since melancholia can be seen as a more important public sensibility related to the whole of humanity, while female sorrow is restricted to personal circumstances. Though melancholia is often seen as a negative feeling, it is kept as a male privilege.

This thesis examines the images of Germany and Sweden in several travelogues during a period of approximately thirty years (1800–1828). The objective is to analyse German and Swedish travelogues and their descriptions of the respective neighbouring country to view how the relationship between the two countries was perceived. The first part of the analysis examines six Swedish travelogues about Germany, written by authors belonging to the Swedish Romanticism. The second part examines six German travelogues about Sweden. The study seeks answers to the following question: how is Germany and Sweden described in the travelogues from the first three decades of the 19th century and how do the German and Swedish national self-images and the images of others appear in the travelogues?  The thesis is to be regarded as a literary study in the field of comparative imagology. Analysing travelogues to which only a few scholars have payed attention, this study expands understanding of national (literary) discourses concerning the neighbouring country. The study of the Swedish travelogues reveals that the Swedish travellers depicted a deep personal relationship to Germany, a sort of ‘elective affinity’, which largely had been developed through the reception of German literature and culture. In Germany, the Swedish travellers were merely on the verge of a foreign space. In the analysis of the German travelogues the thesis shows that a noticeably development concerning the ideas of Sweden was taking place. At the turn of the 19th century, Sweden was often described as barbarian, poor and uncultured. With an increased interest of the German Romantics in Norse mythology and culture, the descriptions of Sweden moved to be positive, visionary and even idealized. The form of a new romanticized notion of Sweden is to be observed during this period.