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This essay examines how grief, melancholy and irony interact in the poetry collections Hej då, ha det så bra! (2003) by Kristina Lugn and Det här är hjärtat (2015) by Bodil Malmsten. The authorships have their similarities and differences when it comes to the themes and language of their poetry. In Malmsten’s collection of poetry, grief is more present than usual and for Lugn, the feeling of melancholy is much heavier in this collection of poetry compared to her previous ones. Although the poetry collections differ in theme, the feeling of grief and melancholy is common between them. The concept of irony is examined in the essay as an antipole to grief and if irony could help the authors poetic self get distance from their grief. In my examination of the concept of melancholia and irony, I have discovered that they differ between men and women. This is interesting when it comes to how women write poetry in the concept of irony and melancholia. This will be used in my essay to better understand how Lugn and Malmsten work within these themes. To explore grief and melancholy in the poetry, I will use Freud’s essay “The Mourning of Melancholia” (1917), Kristeva’s Black sun: depression and melancholia (1989) and also Karin Johannsson’s Melankoliska rum (2009) to give a clear history of the concept of grief and melancholia and the many aspects of it. / I denna uppsats undersöks hur sorg, melankoli och ironi samspelar i diktsamlingarna Hej då, ha det så bra! (2003) av Kristina Lugn och Det här är hjärtat (2015) av Bodil Malmsten.  Författarskapen har sina likheter och skillnader när det gäller dikternas stämning och språk. Diktsamlingarna skiljer sig även från författarnas tidigare verk. För Malmsten är sorgen mer närvarande än någonsin och hos Lugn är känslan av melankoli tyngre i denna diktsamling jämfört med tidigare diktsamlingar. Även om diktsamlingarna skiljer sig i tematik, finns ändå en gemensam känsla av sorg och melankoli. Begreppet ironi undersöks i uppsatsen som en motpol till sorgen, om ironin kan hjälpa till att distansera diktjaget från sorgen eller om ironin kan skapa ett behov att uttrycka sorgen, likt bekännelselitteraturen.  I min analys av begreppen melankoli och ironi har jag stött på att det skiljer sig mellan hur män och kvinnor skriver. Detta är intressant när det kommer till hur kvinnor skriver poesi inom begreppen ironi och melankoli, och detta kommer att användas i min uppsats för att få en bättre förståelse för hur Lugn och Malmsten arbetar inom dessa teman. För att utforska sorg och melankoli i poesi kommer jag att använda Freuds essä ”The Mournig of Melancholia” (1917), Kristevas Black sun: depression and melancholia (1989) och även Karin Johannissons Melankoliska rum:om ångest, leda och sårbarhet i förfluten tid och nutid (2009), för att ge en tydlig bild av begreppet sorg och melankoli och de många aspekterna av det.

This dissertation explores the intimate relationship between irony and romantic subjectivity, by drawing on feminist psychoanalytical theory, via an examination of the shiftings of irony, and humor, in the works of the Swedish romanticist P. D. A. Atterbom (1790–1855). It looks at the critical role played by irony in the formation of Romantic subjectivity, and explores irony’s potential to undermine dualistically gendered notions of subject-object relations. For Atterbom, irony is an aesthetic concept closely related to drama, informed not only by German Romantic-ironic theorists such as Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, but also by the works of Shakespeare, Ludwig Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. The thesis follows the shiftings of Romantic irony in Atterbom’s major literary texts: the cycle of poems Blommorna [The Flowers] (1811), where the Ovidian transformations are used metafictively to play with the relation between poet, poem, and reader; and the literary satire Rimmarbandet [The Rhyme Band] (1810), which, inspired by Tieck’s Der Gestiefelte Kater (1797), uses the metafictive theatre-in-the-theatre motif, as well as carnivalesque and grotesque motifs to expose contrived theatricality and homosocial misogyny in the prevailing culture. The dynamic between the satirist’s subject and the attacked object is a polarized power struggle, where revolt is followed by submission. In this respect, Romantic satire is here conservative. In the fairy tale play Lycksalighetens ö [Island of Felicity] (1824–27), tragedy’s irony is a dialectic between the ideal and the real that strives to create both inner and outer renewal. The play reaches out metafictively to the reader and turns her/him into the poet of a new version of the fairy tale. The reading/writing process inscribed in the work thus becomes a form of renewal and liberation from grief, and old, patriarchal gender roles. Finally, the humorous, unfinished idyll Fågel Blå [Blue Bird] (1814, 1818, 1858) is a work in many pieces, a fragment, a sketch and a non finito that together stages a restorative creative process, where the reader is asked to take part in joining together the scattered parts of Blue Bird itself. To conclude, irony is a feature of Romanticism, which makes the Romantic, literary subject relational and dialogical, open to its Other, and herein lies a form of ethics and an escape from a conventional, patriarchal notion of the self. I discuss this with Julia Kristeva’s theories on how subjectivity changes when it becomes poetic and Jessica Benjamin’s Winnicott-influenced theory of how play can offer a way out from patriarchy’s strict gender roles. The shiftings of irony in Atterbom’s work show a development from the satirical subject, where an aggressive form of self-assertion conceals a lack of individuality – via tragedy’s painstaking efforts to integrate repressed aspects of the self – to the idyll’s more harmonious subject, who has the capacity to laugh at him/herself and see both the grotesque in the holy, and the holy in the grotesque.