Samtiden och framtiden: En studie av mottagandet av två svenska dystopier och deras samtidsförankring

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

The aim of this Masters thesis is to deepen the understanding of how society affects literary criticism by studying the reception of two Swedish dystopian novels and their contemporary anchorage. The questions that we answer here are concerned with how critics have drawn parallels between the novels and events occurring in the contemporary society, and how the critics outlook on the future are connected to ideas about the future in the novels. The first novel, Kallocain 1940 by Karin Boye has been interpreted as a critical statement directed towards totalitarian ideologies. The second novel, After the Flood 1982 by P C Jersild, has been seen as a warning against nuclear warfare. This qualitative study is based on 41 reviews from Swedish daily press. Our theoretical approaches are oriented by Sociology of Literature and come from various researchers and their studies on dystopian fiction as well as views on literary criticism as a mirror of society. Our method of analysis is a text-based one; an analysis of ideas. Our conclusions are that critics make the connections between the novels and the contemporary society in different ways. Explicit parallels are drawn through discussions about the relevance of the novels vital themes and the pointing out of contemporary social and political tendencies. Implicit parallels are made through the reception of the novels based on their outer cha...