Who tells the true story of the world? The western civilisation is highly influenced by the written word. The writings of ancient philosophers, poets and religious authorities still have a strong cultural impact. Myths and religion as well as philosophical and political systems effects our self-concept. These models are all unified by there ambition to explain mankind and tell the story of reality. This essay examines two published diaries in order to discuss their relation to the common story of the world. The objects of the study are Feberboken, by Stina Aronson (written in 1934) and Allt, by Martina Lowden (written in 2006). The diary is a place for the personal story, it gives the writer an opportunity to confront the surrounding world. The conventional conception of reality can be questioned. I will use Pierre Bourdieus theory about the biographic I to discuss the Self in the texts. Two definitions of mimesis will be treated. The traditional meaning of the term, given by Plato, and the postmodern point of view, represented by Gilles Deleuze. I aim to investigate how Feberboken and Allt are confronting the generic image of reality.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how generational identities are conveyed in the reception of two debut novels, Jack by Ulf Lundell and Allt by Martina Lowden. Both novels have been considered literary and social expressions of their generations. The empirical material consists of 14 reviews in Swedish daily press from the time of publication of Jack and Allt, respectively. The thesis revolves around the following questions: How is the generational identity defined in terms of lifestyle practices, milieus and other social circumstances? To what extent are structured factors such as gender and class considered? How are the critics considering the reflexive project of the self? I base the theoretical framework on Anthony Giddens' theories about identity creation in the late modern society. Idea analysis is used in the classification and analysis of the textual material. The model of analysis is based on factors that by Giddens are considered to affect the identity process. The result of the analysis shows that the generational identities expressed in the two novels appear very different. In the reviews discussing Jack, the identity is based on destructive lifestyle practices and is closely related to the political environment. In the reviews of Allt the identity is connected to a literary main theme that is constructed in relation to mediated influences. The conclusion suggests an increased understanding of the individual identity as a result of a reflexive process. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This paper analyzes Allt, Martina Lowden's novel from 2006, from a media discursive perspective. The theoretical framework consists of Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, Friedrich Kittler's research on hermeneutic reading, and N. Katherine Hayles's studies of pattern–randomness controlled meaning production. Various examples on how communication technology influences the narrator’s act of writing illustrate the medial discourse surrounding the body of Allt. Initially the underlying archive that constitutes the narrators raw material for writing (lists, lexical representations and institutional bibliographies) will be identified. The archival background is, further on, essential for the understanding of how a hermeneutic act of reading (to compare with the product of the late 1800-century educational reform, described by Kittler in his essay "Authorship and Love") takes place throughout the novel. Confronted through a hermeneutic interaction, the literature surrounding the act of writing in Allt, becomes meaningful when put back into a distribution system; when red about and written again – in short, when mutated to fit on to new text consumers. This constant and instant meaning production is, as a final step in this paper, compared with the pattern-randomness network described in Hayles's book How We Became Posthuman.