The subject of this dissertation is the representation of temporality, trauma and sexuality in Antanas Škėma’s fiction. The chapter “Temporal structures” examines temporal order in the writer’s novella “Isaac” according to Genettes narratology. The analysis reveals deliberately inserted mechanisms in the construction of the text, which disrupt the narrative investigation. A survey of temporal structures exposes invented events in the text and the definitions of “factual reality” and “imaginary reality” are introduced. The narrative analysis results in a hypothesis that Škėma’s text has been constructed as an imitation of human memory and as a representation of the factual reality outside the text. The chapters “Representation of trauma” and “Representation of sexual perversion” use Freud’s trauma theory and sexual theory as a method. Trauma appears to constitute the construction of the narrator and his urge to distort temporal links between the narrative and the story. When the narrator in Škėma’s “Isaac” focuses on the depiction of sexually perverted consciousness, the text affects the reader by forcing him to break off his horizons of expectation. The depiction of rape in Škėma’s fiction links the themes of sexuality and power and of sexuality and trauma. The writer detaches the representation of sexuality from the definition of love: sexuality, portrayed in the analyzed texts, appears to create its own norms. This is one of many ways to transform the depiction of sexual perversion into a social norm in Škėma’s narrative. The chapter “Škėma’s Autobiography and literary critics” provides a re-reading of the writer’s autobiography and his journalistic texts. The chapter ”Publication and reception of Škėma’s fiction” provides a compiled reading of earlier research and a survey of the writer’s books published in exile.

Jews have been represented in Latvian literature for centuries. This dissertation investigates the images of Jews in a comprehensive selection of Latvian novels published between 1934–1944 in order to establish whether, and to what extent, the traditional images are subject to change under the pressure of modernity, nationalism and a rapidly changing political situation. Since most representations of, and references to, Jews in this literature are very brief, it is necessary to initially deprive the individual works of their titles and authors and let them form an authorless entity, a Corpus, however diverse, yet representative of Latvian society at the time. Through this approach the centres of attention are put aside, and the scattered images of Jews are brought into focus. With the help of a Matrix designed for this purpose, all ‘Jews’ are sorted and analysed. The Matrix, including also linguistic references, illustrates how Jews in the discourse are made to represent the ‘other’ through the provision of certain pieces of information and the omission others. The Jews in the Corpus, with very few exceptions, are thus systematically and consistently reduced to blank images and stereotypes. Through this process they are also subject to ‘othering’ and dehumanisation, albeit not necessarily articulated as such. The social distance between Latvians and Jews becomes more pronounced in the Corpus compared to in the Latvian literary tradition, and there are several examples of negative attitudes and anti-Semitism. Yet, with regard to the extreme political situation, especially under Soviet and Nazi occupations, these examples are fewer than expected: the investigated literature follows its own traditions and, with hardly any exceptions, does not reflect societal and political changes immediately.

This thesis investigates the system of compounding attested in the earliest written Latvian texts of the 16th and 17th centuries. The philological analysis presented in this work is the first systematic attempt to extensively treat compounds in Old Latvian. The purpose of this thesis is to thoroughly describe the system of compounding of the earliest period of written Latvian. One of the main aims of the analysis provided in this work is to determine whether the Old Latvian compounds were distinguished in terms of their meaning and form. This is why another important aim of this study is to discern the most characteristic formal properties of each category of compounds in Old Latvian. This study also addresses the morphological variation of the components of compounds and seeks to explain why one finds different tendencies of compounding in the texts of this period.    Firstly, it is shown in this thesis that compounds in Old Latvian were clearly distinguished in terms of their meaning. The main semantic types of Old Latvian compounds, which were analyzed in this study, are the determinative compounds, the possessive compounds, the verbal governing compounds, and the copulative compounds. Secondly, it is argued that the aforementioned types of compounds were clearly differentiated in terms of the formal properties of their components. A large number of possessive compounds and verbal governing compounds had the compositional suffix -is (m.)/-e (f.). By contrast, only a handful of determinative compounds had this suffix. In view of the distribution of the suffix found in the Old Latvian compounds, it is suggested that the suffix was originally restricted to adjectival compounds. Furthermore, the different types of compounds in Old Latvian were also distinguished in terms of the first component. In the majority of cases, both the possessive compounds and the verbal governing compounds were coined without linking elements, while the determinative compounds had linking elements to a larger extent. Thirdly, it is proposed in this thesis that a part of linking elements used in the determinative compounds in Old Latvian originated from the original stem vowels of the first components. Thus, it is argued that stem compounds were still attested in the Old Latvian texts, although this Baltic model of coining compounds is no longer visible in Modern Latvian. Lastly, it is suggested that the tendencies of compounding found in the texts under discussion represent dialectal differences. Another contribution of this study is that the Old Latvian compounds are not treated in isolation, but analyzed in drawing parallels with compounds in the other Baltic languages, Lithuanian in particular. Hence, by analyzing common features and similarities between the compounding systems, the Old Latvian compounds are positioned within the context of the Baltic system of compounding.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate norm in contemporary Russian verbal stress. In a first step the concept of norm is explored. It is shown that the criteria generally used in Russian for defining norm (correspondence to the language system, usage and authority/tradition/necessity) are not applied strictly. It is also concluded that any study of norms must take into account the distinction between the explicit norm, i.e. the codification, and the implicit norm, i.e. the usage and attitude of educated native speakers. In a second step the explicit norm is investigated. The analysis is based on the stress notation in two orthoepic dictionaries. This comparison shows that there is not, as is often suggested, one unanimous, "objectively existing", explicit stress norm. In a third step, the implicit norm is examined. This is done through a survey of reported and actual usage, carried out on 106 Russian speakers in Moscow. Subsequently, implicit norms are related to explicit norms. There is compliance between these in many cases, but the discrepancies are numerous. Furthermore, there is no direct or predictable relationship between the implicit stress norms and the labels these stresses are assigned in handbooks. A comparison with additional sources demonstrates that among the, in all, nine sources no two are perfectly alike in their notation. Sources that reflect the implicit norm better than others are identified. Finally, dictionary data and the survey results are compared with results from previous surveys (1956-1994). This shows that certain stress variants have apparently functioned as the implicit norm for several decades, but this has not yet been taken into account in codification. The general conclusions are that there is in theory an unclear definition of norm; there is in practice disagreement in codification; there is no official codex, although some sources might be considered more reliable; there is in many cases a discrepancy between explicit and implicit norms, which is most likely a result of arbitrariness or subjectivism and of conservatism. It is possible that these conclusions are valid for areas of language normativisation other than verbal stress.

This work concerns the book "Litauiska noveller" [Lithuanian Short Stories],  a collection of nine Lithuanian short stories translated into Swedish by noted Finnish diplomat Ragnar Öller (1893-1960) and tutor and  journalist Nils Bohman (1902-1943).   The authors of the nine short stories are Jonas Biliūnas, Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius, Antanas Žukauskas-Vienuolis, Ignas Jurkunas-Scheynius, Jurgis Savickis, Petras Cvirka, and Petronėlė Orintaitė. The 242-page book published 1940 in Stockholm, was the first translation of literary texts from the Lithuanian appearing in the Swedish language. In spite of a professionally carried out translation, the book never gained the attention of Swedish literary circles, and has more or less been forgotten throughout the post war period and up to the present. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the history leading up to the publication of the book within the context of Swedish-Lithuanian relations, and analyse the possible reasons of why this work remained unnoticed for so many decades. Why was the book not reviewed in the Swedish daily press? Was the book ignored because of the choice of authors of the novels? Was the disregard due to the political situation? A discussion from a few selected points of view follows on some possible reasons of why the launch of "Litauiska noveller" failed in 1940. An appendix listing published works of Lithuanian authors in the Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic) up to 1996 is attached.