<p>The purpose of this essay is to look upon the gender structure in Sweden, during the late Middle Ages. Mainly I focus on how the church viewed men and women, since the material of my research, the miracle stories of three saints, was found credible and was written down by churchmen. The saints, whose miracles I have studied, are Birgitta Birgersdotter and Katarina Ulfsdotter of Vadstena and Niklas Hermansson of Linköping. These miracles have earlier been studied by the historian Anders Fröjmark, who has noticed that there are fewer heeled women than men figuring in the miracles. Because of this, Fröjmark draws the conclusion that women were less able to leave their homes and travel as pilgrims to the holy sites of the saints. I, on the other hand, argue that the pilgrim journey was a religious act that both sexes could take equal part in. There are for example plenty of cases in the miracle stories were women have traveled for long distances alone, or with their cured children. The reasons why females are underrepresented could instead be that men seemed more reliable in the eyes of the churchmen. Another reason to the lower representation of women is that men, during the late middle ages, seem to have been far more likely to be the target of accidents and violent assaults.This research also shows that women, being regarded as less reliable, seldom were accepted as witnesses to the miracles. Nuns were however an exception and there is reason to believe that also widows were seen as more reliable than other women. Females who were present during a “birth miracle” were also allowed to witness.</p>

The purpose of this essay is to look upon the gender structure in Sweden, during the late Middle Ages. Mainly I focus on how the church viewed men and women, since the material of my research, the miracle stories of three saints, was found credible and was written down by churchmen. The saints, whose miracles I have studied, are Birgitta Birgersdotter and Katarina Ulfsdotter of Vadstena and Niklas Hermansson of Linköping. These miracles have earlier been studied by the historian Anders Fröjmark, who has noticed that there are fewer heeled women than men figuring in the miracles. Because of this, Fröjmark draws the conclusion that women were less able to leave their homes and travel as pilgrims to the holy sites of the saints. I, on the other hand, argue that the pilgrim journey was a religious act that both sexes could take equal part in. There are for example plenty of cases in the miracle stories were women have traveled for long distances alone, or with their cured children. The reasons why females are underrepresented could instead be that men seemed more reliable in the eyes of the churchmen. Another reason to the lower representation of women is that men, during the late middle ages, seem to have been far more likely to be the target of accidents and violent assaults.This research also shows that women, being regarded as less reliable, seldom were accepted as witnesses to the miracles. Nuns were however an exception and there is reason to believe that also widows were seen as more reliable than other women. Females who were present during a “birth miracle” were also allowed to witness.

The Swedish author Birgitta Stenberg (1932-2014) is primarily known for her subversive autobiographical novels based on her travelling and adventures in Europe, mainly Kärlek i Europa. Her work is characterized by subjects as sex, drugs, crime and breaking free from the limiting demands of everyday life. The book Eldar och is (2010) creates an autobiographical narrative around her grandmother Alma, her mother Ingeborg, and Birgitta herself. In the turn towards her own history the novel can be seen as a break from Stenberg’s earlier authorship. To analyze how motherhood is depicted in the novel I use Sara Ahmed and Judith Halberstam theorization of queer orientations and life lines, and motherhood studies based primarily on Jenny Björklunds queer reading of mothers who leave. In the analysis of the text two major themes emerged: Motherhood and class, and Motherhood, sexuality, and blood ties. The class theme shows how motherhood is shaped through class position and also how different class positions makes certain life lines within reach. Motherhood was also directly tied to changing class positions making motherhood both a sacrifice and possibility. The mothers also shaped their daughter’s orientation in the world in a profound way. The theme on sexuality and blood ties shows how sexuality posed both as a threat and a possibility to negotiate positions tied to motherhood. The result shows how heteronormative life scripts circumference motherhood but also how slips and slides on the straight line forms a resistance against these norms. By exposing the fantasy of the family motherhood as a construction, as balancing along a straight line, including slips, and uncertain blood ties, different realities come within reach.

In the novel, Kärlek i Europa, the main character Birgitta travels to Europe searching for a new approach to life: to her gender, her sexuality and her social class. The places she visits represent two different discourses: the Stockholmean discourse where life is strictly adjusted to gender and class and the European discourse where the frame of life is more open concerning gender, sexuality and social class. The purpose of this essay is to examine what kinds of scope for action the two discourses enables Birgitta in terms of gender, sexuality and social class. By employing a discourse theoretical method combined with intersectional theory focusing on the power axis of gender, sexuality and social class, I hope to reach my goal of investigating what the discourses enables Birgitta. My results show that, in some respects, the ideals for a woman within the European discourse are less strict than the ones within the Stockholmean discourses. My results also show that while Birgitta leaves the Stockholmean discourse regarding her gender and sexuality, she never fully leaves in terms of her social class. Her habitus is so fully developed that it enables her to float between the classes while travelling Europe.

Utgåva av en predikan skriven i Vadstena kloster att hållas på den Heliga Birgittas kanonisationsdag

In this thesis called “Soon there was nowhere to go”, I investigate how relations between environments, landscapes and emotions are shaped in Birgitta Lillpers’ novel Om du fick tänka dig ett hem (If you could think of a home) (2010). I do this by looking at how landscapes are expressed in the novel and how the human bodies who live in this landscapes answers to their surroundings. The landscapes in the novel are exploited and fragmented, destroyed by production. But they are also landscapes full of traces, of different temporalities and connections. Through Volmar Frank, the main protagonist, other ways of relating to the land are made visible, in a sensual way, a way built on his longing for an inclusive relation to his surroundings. Here I also point to the difficulties with a relation built on closeness, because, as Lillpers shows, this could also be the moment where destruction begins, with the human gaze and how it values different lives. The exploited landscapes where loss is inscribed awaken strong feelings of hopelessness and grief within the characters of the novel. This comes from living with the knowledge of an continuous, ongoing loss around them, but also from the painful awakening, a changing gaze from which one cannot return. I investigate grief and the possibility to express this grief, both in a social context and on an individual level. In the thesis I have shown the difficulties that come with ecological grief, both in the acknowledgement of a grief that reaches beyond the human, and in relation to the absence of rituals when it comes to grieving the more-than-human. I also bring up the temporal problems with a loss that is ongoing. Here I problematize norms around what and who is recognized as grievable and how a process of mourning is expected to unfold. Lillpers gives no answers in her novel, neither solutions nor alternative worlds, but she raises important questions about what we do to our environments and to non-human lives. She leaves us with the question of what kind of world we can imagine, if we could think of a home? She also leaves openings to other ways of approaching the world, approaches built on reciprocity. I conclude that grief and the process of mourning could be a place to begin, a starting point for a transformative process, which I argue is necessary to access the problems we face today with destroyed environments and species vanishing at an escalating pace, with consequences for all life on earth. / I denna uppsats undersöker jag känslomässiga svar på människans exploatering av miljöer och landskap i Birgitta Lillpers roman Om du fick tänka dig ett hem (2010). Detta gör jag genom att titta på hur möten och relationer mellan kroppar och landskap gestaltas utifrån en affektiv ekokritik som förstår plats som avgörande när det kommer till hur känslor formas. Romanens karaktärer rör sig i ett trasigt, sårigt och fragmenterat landskap, där det knappt längre existerar platser som inte förstörts av människan. Här pågår liv, styrda av produktionens logik, byggda på narrativ om exploatering som nödvändig för meningsfullhet och social välfärd. Den som inte accepterar dessa narrativ, som känner sorg över förlusten, har ingenstans att ta vägen med sina känslor. Makten sitter i rum långt borta och hör inte de röster som försöker nå in med sina förtvivlade skrik. Vi lever idag i en tid när miljöer förstörs och arter dör ut med en allt högre hastighet. Trots att vi vet att vi behöver ändra vårt sätt att leva händer väldigt lite i praktiken. Den här uppsatsen är ett inlägg i ett samtal om hur vi kan hitta andra sätt att förhålla oss till vår omvärld. Detta gör jag med utgångspunkt i en sorg över det som förvinner och med frågor kring var det är möjligt att ta vägen, både känslomässigt och platsmässigt i en alltmer exploaterad värld. I uppsatsen lyfter jag hur sorg som riktar sig mot det icke-mänskliga möter problem eftersom den inte erkänns som legitim, men också svårigheten med att sörja en förlust som pågår utan synligt slut. Samtidigt kan vår förmåga att sörja det mer-än-mänskliga vara en avgörande aspekt när det kommer till ett annat sätt att närma oss vår omvärld. Lillpers ger i romanen inga egentliga svar, men hon visar på svårigheten att navigera i detta sorgens landskap, och synliggör frågor vi måste ställa om hur vi brukar och förbrukar vår värld. Hon visar även på öppningar mot andra sätt att närma sig omvärlden som bygger på sinnliga möten och en längtan efter mer ömsesidiga relationer med landskap och med icke-mänskligt liv.

<p>Dag Wellander: Meaning – memory: oblivion. A reading of Birgitta Trotzig’s The mud kings daughter. Master of Arts paper. Written in Swedish. 115 pp. Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University, SE – 106 91 Stockholm</p><p>The purpose of the paper is to treat one question, including the consequences of it’s answer, the question if The mud kings daughter is a text that has meaning. The question is in a first series of steps being approached by the way of scrutinizing the meaning found in the text in accordance with the methodology applied by those four dissertations that are available on the subject, i.e. on The mud kings daughter. These examinations do not find that the alleged forms of meaning stated by the dissertations is being produced by the text. On the contrary striking similarities is being found between these alleged forms of meaning on the one hand, and on the other the unfounded, disambiguated meaning that, according to Shoshana Felman, Freudian and anti-Freudian critics alike, have said is to be found in Henry James’ short novel The Turn of the Screw. In a following series of steps – some of which are being taken on Jacques Derrida’s advice – the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity is observed and often found to be enchanting, whereupon the rhetorical necessity of the textual ambiguity is found to be affliction.</p><p>This split between the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity as rather enchanting, and the rhetorical necessity of the textual ambiguity being affliction, is then treated as something that hardly could be understood, and, accordingly, as something that might be understood as something that could not be understood. The idea is being put in that this split could be thought of as an inversion of oblivion into a living memory of a forgotten reading impression, an idea that is being inspired by the inversion of oblivion into a living memory in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.</p><p>Keywords: Birgitta Trotzig, Shoshana Felman, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Proust, meaning, ambiguity, memory, oblivion.</p>

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om sexualsynen i Vecko-Revyn under perioden 1955-2005 följer samma förändring som har inträffat i sexualsynen i samhället enligt en för studien sammansatt analysmodell. Med hjälp av den hermeneutiska metoden har källmaterialet, som består av artiklar och spalter från Vecko-Revyn från 1955-2005, analyserats. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten består Lennerheds, Sandströms, Bergenheims och McLarens teoretiska skildringar av sexualsynen, vilka är sammansatta i en för studien aktuell analysmodell. Slutsatsen visar att Vecko-Revyns sexualsyn följde förändringen i samhällets sexualsyn i olika grad under de olika decennierna. Den mångfasetterade bilden av Vecko-Revyns sexualsyn som framträder i det undersökta materialet visar att Vecko-Revyns åsikter i vissa fall var mer liberala än samhällets medan de i andra fall var mer konservativa. Det var främst i Vecko-Revyn liberala inställning till föräktenskapliga sexuella relationer som de skiljde sig åt gentemot samhället under den undersökta perioden.</p>

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om sexualsynen i Vecko-Revyn under perioden 1955-2005 följer samma förändring som har inträffat i sexualsynen i samhället enligt en för studien sammansatt analysmodell. Med hjälp av den hermeneutiska metoden har källmaterialet, som består av artiklar och spalter från Vecko-Revyn från 1955-2005, analyserats. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten består Lennerheds, Sandströms, Bergenheims och McLarens teoretiska skildringar av sexualsynen, vilka är sammansatta i en för studien aktuell analysmodell. Slutsatsen visar att Vecko-Revyns sexualsyn följde förändringen i samhällets sexualsyn i olika grad under de olika decennierna. Den mångfasetterade bilden av Vecko-Revyns sexualsyn som framträder i det undersökta materialet visar att Vecko-Revyns åsikter i vissa fall var mer liberala än samhällets medan de i andra fall var mer konservativa. Det var främst i Vecko-Revyn liberala inställning till föräktenskapliga sexuella relationer som de skiljde sig åt gentemot samhället under den undersökta perioden.

Dag Wellander: Meaning – memory: oblivion. A reading of Birgitta Trotzig’s The mud kings daughter. Master of Arts paper. Written in Swedish. 115 pp. Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University, SE – 106 91 Stockholm The purpose of the paper is to treat one question, including the consequences of it’s answer, the question if The mud kings daughter is a text that has meaning. The question is in a first series of steps being approached by the way of scrutinizing the meaning found in the text in accordance with the methodology applied by those four dissertations that are available on the subject, i.e. on The mud kings daughter. These examinations do not find that the alleged forms of meaning stated by the dissertations is being produced by the text. On the contrary striking similarities is being found between these alleged forms of meaning on the one hand, and on the other the unfounded, disambiguated meaning that, according to Shoshana Felman, Freudian and anti-Freudian critics alike, have said is to be found in Henry James’ short novel The Turn of the Screw. In a following series of steps – some of which are being taken on Jacques Derrida’s advice – the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity is observed and often found to be enchanting, whereupon the rhetorical necessity of the textual ambiguity is found to be affliction. This split between the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity as rather enchanting, and the rhetorical necessity of the textual ambiguity being affliction, is then treated as something that hardly could be understood, and, accordingly, as something that might be understood as something that could not be understood. The idea is being put in that this split could be thought of as an inversion of oblivion into a living memory of a forgotten reading impression, an idea that is being inspired by the inversion of oblivion into a living memory in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Keywords: Birgitta Trotzig, Shoshana Felman, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Proust, meaning, ambiguity, memory, oblivion.