The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg’s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ”nature” is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ”nature” is tentatively defined as ”that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation”, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections. In Hos rådjur, wild nature takes the shape of a ”raw” animal that seems to threaten the human characters. In Mörk materia the threat to humanity comes from matter itself, matter that is dark and unruly. The nature/culture relationship is complex and continuously evolving, with several different and mutually exclusive possibilities being explored in the poems. Berg’s poetry has often been characterised as transcending boundaries, and metamorphoses and dissolution of boundaries between humans, animals and other organisms are abundant in the two poetry collections. Despite this, the study demonstrates how dualistic notions of nature and culture, body and spirit, are upheld throughout the texts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-26028 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Attfors, Johan |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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