The Night Nativity by Geertgen tot Sint Jans depicts the birth of Christ in a manner that emphasizes the role of the Virgin as mother and Christ as the enlightener of the world. In this paper, I will argue that the Night Nativity was directed primarily toward meeting the devotional needs and interests of the nuns of the Convent of Our Lady of the Visitation near Haarlem. This convent is of particular interest because it is associated with the Windesheim Congregation of the Modern Devotion, which was a religious movement that privileged certain forms of lay spirituality. In particular, the adherents of the Modern Devotion seemed to have preferred various forms of affective devotion often associated with “women’s spirituality.” Geertgen’s image, I believe, appealed to the women in the convent because it focuses on the role of the Virgin and, in doing so, activated well-known tropes of female spirituality.

Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 2007

Denna undersökning syftar till att undersöka hur olika populärvetenskapliga böcker porträtterar den heliga Birgitta.  Frågorna som ställdes till denna undersökning är kopplat till hur den heliga Birgittas religiösa och historiska bilder såg ut i de olika populärvetenskapliga böckerna samt att jämföra hur olika författare beskriver detta. Anledningen att undersökningen syftar på just heliga Birgitta är att hon är en kvinna som det har skrivits mycket kring, vilket gör att det är möjligt att jämföra hur hon porträtteras, hur de historiska och religiösa bilderna av henne framställs av de olika författarna. Metoden som denna studie vilar på är främst en komparativ metod, där jämförelser mellan olika författare kommer stå i fokus.  Resultatet visar att heliga Birgitta var en viktig och betydande kvinna under sin samtid och att hon har lämnat stora avtryck efter sig i historien och för kristendomen.

Studiens syfte är att visa hur sociala förhållanden tematiseras i Birgitta Trotzigs roman Dykungens dotter, med fokus på uteslutningsförhållanden. Med hjälp av en strukturalistisk metod hämtad från Michel Serres avtäcker analysen närvaron av en särskild operation av grundande uteslutning inom olika samhälleliga sfärer som presenteras i romanen. Operationen betraktas i analogi med den syndabocksmekanism som René Girard teoretiserat. Det blir därmed möjligt att i det samhälle som Trotzigs roman presenterar se en hierarkisk ordning byggd på ett uteslutet element, ett som förkroppsligas i bland annat den växande kroppen, den trängtande sexualiteten, den kringdrivande befolkningen och dylandets levande oordning.

Uppsatsen är en motivstudie av hur den skrivande kvinnan skildras i romanerna Ingen manskvinna (1919) av Ulla Bjerne, Kärlek i Europa (1981) av Birgitta Stenberg och Grand final i Skojarbranschen (2011) av Kerstin Ekman. Motivet av den skrivande kvinnan och hur hon förhåller sig till sitt skapande utifrån könsnormativa förväntningar, analyseras utifrån ett genusteoretiskt perspektiv med Beverly Skeggs respektabilitetsteori som ramverk. Jag använder även ett intersektionellt perspektiv som analysverktyg. Uppsatsen använder sig också av genreteori utifrån konstnärsromanen och dess konventioner, som behandlas och undersöks i förhållande till de valda romanerna. / The paper is a study of how the female writer is portrayed in the Swedish novels Ingen manskvinna [No man’s women] (1919) by Ulla Bjerne, Kärlek i Europa [Love in Europa] (1981) by Birgitta Stenberg and Grand final i skojarbranschen [Grande finale in the humbug game] (2011) by Kerstin Ekman. The analysis of the novels portrayed female writer and how her writing interacts with society’s gender roles, are based on a gender theory, with Beverly Skeggs theory of respectability as the theoretic framework. I also make use of an intersectional theory as an analytic tool. The purpose of the paper is also to apply genre studies and investigate the form and conventions of the artist novel and how the selected novels relate to the genre.

At the centre of this study lies the question if normative gender thinking affects the way poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written, this in relation to both the gender of the reviewer and the poet. The study crosses three academic fields; gender studies, poetry and journalism, and is based on the cultural studies theory of media affecting and even creating the world around it. The study is based on two types of analysis. One quantitative analysis based on the thematic criticism theory about detail studies that shows bigger patterns, this analysis focuses on how the poet and his/hers work are being treated in the reviews in areas such as how much space they´re given in the newspapers, how they are named by the reviewer and the tendency to quote the reviewed work.  And one qualitative analysis based on the new criticism method of close reading, that focuses on the reviewers way of writing and how that may be connected with theories of gender differences, this both connected to the gender of the reviewers and the poets. The material chosen for this study are all the reviews that were published in the same newspapers and that reviewed two specific poetry works by two specific poets chosen with great sensibility to age and career so that their difference in gender would be the most significant difference between them. The works were chosen based on year of publishing, they were supposed to be published as newly as possible and as close to each other in time as possible. The works I ended up with were Dimman av allt (2001) and Svart som silver (2008) by Bruno K. Öijer and Silverskåp (2000) and Nu försvinner vi eller ingår (2007) by Birgitta Lillpers. The results of this study show several differences in how poetry is being judged and how poetry reviews are being written are connected with the gender of the poets and the reviewer. Lillpers got 35% less space in the newspapers and Öijers poetry got quoted a lot more which confirms that female poetry often is considered as less important than the male poetry, and that men in general tends to be judged as more professional than woman. The male reviewers tended to express themselves with greater certainty than the female reviewers who held a more professional tone in their reviews and focused more on the technical aspects of the poetry. This confirms the theory of the male words are being looked upon as the truth but contradicts the theory of women writing more based on personal experience and of women being less skilled in language techniques. In conclusion, there are differences in how poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written that are connected to the genders of the poet and the reviewer but these differences are complex and does not show a clear normative way of thinking about gender

The focus of this study is on how the identity narrative is constructed and how the narrative effects the reader’s perception of the protagonist’s identity in the autobiographical novels Kärlek i Europa and alla vilda by Birgitta Stenberg. The discourse of autobiographical writing is used to analyse the novels with the perspective that an autobiographical text communicates with it’s readers. By close-reading the pattern of the narrative becomes visible. The analys of the narrative show that the narrator changes positions throughout the novels. In effect, this means that the narrator and the protagonist sometimes occupies the same position in the text, and sometimes not. By mapping the narrator’s positions and by separating the author, narrator and protagonist the narrative structure emerges as complex. The authors position and the referentiality to something ”real” outside the text creates a picture of the protagonist as a part of the awareness of gender discrimination toward female writers. It also raises the issue of the historical discrimination toward LGBTQ persons and ethnic groups. The narrator’s changing position re-structures time and space by inserting different timelines. Through the historical, the traveling and the future timelines the development of the protagonist’s identity emerges. In contrast to the genre bildungsroman the identity narrative becomes visible as a self-reflexive project. The reflexive project allows the narrator to compare the identity of the self through time. This structure also invites the reader to co-create the protagonist identity alongside the narrator.

This is an essay about the swedish modernist writer and poet Gösta Oswald’s novel En privatmans vedermödor. The essay focuses on the question about how he uses the modernist language to portray the subject and main character Mr O. Oswald’s novel and his portrayal of the subject is compared and contrasted to earlier ideas about the subject in the modernist and pessimistic traditions presented by philosophers, e g Friedrich Nietzsche. Oswald’s literary style and ideas are also compared to his contemporary modernist writers, for instance Stig Dagerman. Through a psychoanalytical reading of Oswald’s novel using mostly Jacques Lacan’s theories about language the essay argues that it is a story about the nothingness of the subject. It’s also argued that the environment in the novel and Oswald’s use of mythological and classical motifs from Orpheus, Virgil and Dante enhances the themes of nothingness and the bleak outlook on life in the nihilistic post World War II cultural climate. / <p>Slutgiltigt godkännandedatum: 2023-05-30</p>

<p>The aim of this study is to analyse the sexual power relations in contemporary urban novels of Swedish female writers.</p><p>I have identified a discourse in these novels as a heteronormative matrix which power is ruled by norms and assumptions about normality in both the heterosexual and lesbian stories. For this purpose I have related to Ivar B. Neumanns theory that individuals always find a way to confront the discourse by three different strategies. These strategies are used in my study as tools to organise these novels, because it is possible to see that the protagonists find at least one of these strategy’s to her protest.</p><p>The first strategy I studied was the docile. Here I argument that the heroines in Alla vilda, Jag minns alla mina älskare och hur de brukade ta på mig, Inte enklare än så, Lögner and Att älska henne do not reject the discourse about sexual power relationships. The second strategy, named the oppositionist, implies the protagonists refusing to be left as victims. In one way or another, either by change the rolls of the sexes (Ta vad man vill ha) or by problematising the order of them (Ego girl) or find lesbianism as a way to reject the discourse (both the novels by Mian Lodalen: Smulklubbens skamlösa systrar and Trekant). The reluctant is the last strat-egy who is the creative one, which rejects some things and adapt to other. Here I place the heroines from Stjärnor utan svindel, Andra sidan Alex and Storlek 37.</p><p>The result of this study is that despite quite different strategies to oppose against the hetero-sexual power discourse and the normative femininity everyone relates to it and thereby con-firms it.</p>

This thesis explores the relationship of the Sermo Angelicus of St. Birgitta of Sweden, written in the fourteenth century, with the Nativity/Concert of Angels panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grunewald in 1514 for a hospital and monastery run by the Antonite Order. Taking into consideration the context of the altarpiece, this thesis analyzes its iconography in relation to specific passages from the Sermo Angelicus, suggesting that the text was a possible source used by the Antonites in the Nativity/Concert of Angels panel. By doing so, parallel themes of salvation in both the text and the panel are discovered that in turn relate to the altarpiece in its entirety and present a message fashioned specifically for those patients at the hospital at Isenheim that viewed the altarpiece.