Zugl.: Zürich, Univ., Diss., 2008

In this essay, I compare ten different depictions of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. These depictions are all from books published between 1924 and 2000, which deal with a wider context of the history of Ireland or Northern Ireland. I relate the depictions to the point in time when they were written, the geographic focus of the book, and the views that the author expresses about the present and the future, and about the significance of history. The main result of my essay is that the depictions differ in a way that seems connected to whether or not there was an ongoing violent conflict in Ireland at the time the books were written. Texts written when the political violence was present, or close, in time and location, are likely to be written either in a neutral tone with concern about objectivity, or incorporating the Easter Rising events in context of an ongoing socialist struggle. Texts written in times of seemingly lasting peace are generally more uncritical and have a more epic form.

Each year a significant number of children’s books, with a wide range of themes, are being published. The relation between children and adults is a common theme. In this study I have analyzed ten children’s books, five from the 1970’s and five from the 2010’s. I have in my analysis used Steven Lukes’ (2008) power theory to examine and compare the power relations between the children and the adults in these books. To find out more about the views that authors of children’s literature have on the adult characters in their books, I have interviewed two authors, Barbro Lindgren who has been writing children’s books since 1965 and Åsa Mendel-Hartvig who started to write children’s literature in 2010. I have compared their views and used them in my analysis. From my studies I could see a change in the power structure. The young characters have more room to act and the adults show less of authority in the books from the 2010’s. There are many possible explanations to this and I choose to see the Swedish curriculum as one of them. Today’s guidelines of letting children be part of decision makings could be an influence on our society as well as on the children’s literature.

Diss. Linköping : Univ.

Diss. Univ. Zürich, 2008. / Im Buchh.: Zürich : Chronos-Verlag. Literaturverz.

Univ., Diss.--Sheffield, 2000.

No description available.

No description available.

Sara Lidman’s second novel Hjortronlandet (1955) unfolds in the north of Sweden in the early 20th century. It describes the progress of modernity and the conflicting interests of an old local culture and a new more “civilised” one. The two cultures are constituted by different value systems and in the novel they are represented by two neighbour communities. In this essay I examine this cultural encounter out from a postcolonial perspective by looking at the definitions of We and Them and how the author in various ways transcends the boundaries between the two positions. In order to do that I have used Michail Bachtin’s theories on the chronotope, a literary unity comprising the aspects of both time and space which together includes an ethical-moral dimension. In this context, theories on local and universal values formulated by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Elleke Boehmer have proved useful. With the help of their definition of “time” as a non-linear and complex unity of the past and the present, I have tried to make visible new layers of meaning in Lidman’s novel. Moreover, I have examined the author’s ambivalent position, located in between centre and periphery. This position originates from the author’s personal experiences of leaving her home region for a modern urban life. This essay shows how Sara Lidman by different means illustrates the problems with the conventional definitions of We and Them, and how she out from her hybrid position is able to depict the representations of these positions as both complex and unstable.

Zugl.: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2002