This thesis analyses the literature debate in the overlooked Swedish magazine Samtid och Framtid 1944–1949. The magazine was first published at the end of World War II on the initiative of publisher Johan Hansson. After an interesting start, the terms of the debate in the magazine were changed after a power struggle on the editorial level. Thus, the magazine never became the influential arena for literary discussions that it first had potential of becoming. With its initial focus on how to construct a new post-war world, the debates in the magazine, however, provide an interesting material for an investigation of attempts to renegotiate the position of literature in society. This is conducted through a perspective that focuses on the debaters’ use of metaphors, but also their specific experiences of the past and their expectations on the future. Central oppositions between aesthetic and committed ideals are highlighted, but also between individualism and collectivism. It is also demonstrated that the debates successively turned more concrete, not least focusing on the very influential Swedish literary generation of the 1940s.