In this essay I will be examining the protagonist Niels Lyhnes naturalistic ambitions in J.P. Jacobsens novel Niels Lyhne (1880), more accuratley how the novel Niels Lyhne succeedes as a naturalistic novel through the failure of the protagonist Niels Lyhnes own ambition to live by the ideals of naturalism. Niels remains throughout his life a strong atheist because, in his childhood, God did not answer his prayers to save his dying aunts life. His atheism and his naturalistic ambitions turn into, which I will show, a form of idealism. This could be viewed as inevitable. To renounce ones belief in something also means that one embraces a belief in something else, even if this ”something” is the lack of what one used to believe in. Niels Lyhnes failure, however, means that the book Niels Lyhne succedes as a naturalistic novel. What Jacobsen has achieved is to depict man as the incomplete creature that she is.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-195724 |
Date | January 2022 |
Creators | Karlsson, Felix |
Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
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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