Torsten Pettersson: "The Literary Work in History 1: Metonymic and Metaphoric Contextualization"

Research presentation by Torsten Pettersson, Uppsala University. 

Abstract: 

“Contextualization” is perhaps the most important concept of literary scholarship, ubiquitous in its avatars: schools of methodology laying down precepts for what kind of context should be valorized. Nevertheless, the concept itself is neglected in literary theory. In two independent but synergetic seminars, on 14 September and 5 October, I present for discussion theoretical comments on two kinds of contextualization as well as two views of history related to them: the chronotopical and the thematic. In the latter case, the methodology of a new Swedish global history, Natur & Kulturs globalhistoria, 1–2, ed. Klas-Göran Karlsson (Stockholm 2022), will be considered along with the special nature of literary texts as historical phenomena.

    At each seminar a theoretical introduction is followed by an analysis of a set of literary works. At this seminar on 14 September the works, related as depictions of the forest, are by Verner von Heidenstam, Dante, Hjalmar Gullberg, Stevie Smith (= Florence Margaret Smith) (short texts provided at the seminar with English translations) as well as Ursula K. Le Guin (the story “Vaster than Empires and More Slow”, in her 1976 collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters but also available separately as an e-book).