Linus Ljungström: Down-to-Earth Word Wrestles: Local-Colour Literature as Modernist Verbal Art in Stina Aronson, Tage Aurell, Stig Dagerman and Sara Lidman

Abstract

This dissertation aims to explore the tension between modernism and local-colour literature as registered in the works of four Swedish writers from the immediate post-war era: the novels Hitom himlen (‘This Side of Heaven’, 1946) by Stina Aronson (1892–1956), Bröllopsbesvär (‘Wedding Worries’, 1949) by Stig Dagerman (1923–1954), and Tjärdalen (‘The Tar Still’, 1953) by Sara Lidman (1923–2004), as well as the short story ‘Pingstbrud’ (‘Whitsun Bride’) from the prose collection Nyare berättelser (‘Newer Stories’, 1949) by Tage Aurell (1895–1976). How are the provincial communities in these works portrayed socially and linguistically? In what ways, discursively and narratologically, has the setting been traellnsformed into a literary mate­rial and applied as part of a deliberate poetics? Is it possible to understand these works as a distinctive literary movement in the history of Swedish literature?

The examination of the individual works approaches these questions through a linguistic and narrative analysis, that focuses on the use of dialects, free indirect discourse, and certain context-specific discourses, such as gossip, as well as the portrayal of the social norms of the rural communities portrayed. The analysis is also conducted against a backdrop of con­textual information, such as contemporary reviews and authorial reflections on their craft and their apprehensions regarding language.

The dissertation re-examines so called neo-provincialism (‘nyprovinsialism’), a sup­posed school of literature in the 1950s and rejects the term in favour of the concept of modernist depictions of rural communities (modernistisk bygdeskildring), while turning to the sources of  the notion: the provincial authors of the late 1940s and their original take on local-colour literature. This dissertation shows that reviewers considered their works as occupying an “avantgarde po­sition” and compared them to the ruling modernist school of the decade, 40-talisterna. The individual analyses of the works of the authors mentioned also evince interrelatedness. A modernist form principle underlies different experimental takes on local-colour literature. The works also reveal a common attitude to language through the elevation of the discourse of everyday life and by putting it to a conscious literary use.