Swedish Studies

828 Swedish Studies LITERATURE By Birgitta Thompson, Lecturer in Swedish, University of Wales, Lampeter 1. General A History of Finland’s Literature, ed. George C. Schoolfield (Histories of Scandinavian Literature, 4), Nebraska U.P., Lincoln–London, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, xxxiv + 877 pp., is the fourth volume in this series of the history of Scandinavian literature under the general editorship of Sven H. Rossel. The literary history of Finland, which is here taken up to 1990, immediately presents a problem to its chronicler with its roots in the history of the country and two distinct bodies of literature. Predictably the work consists of two main parts of five chapters each, ‘Finnish-language literature’ (1–272) and ‘Finland-Swedish literature’ (273–726), plus a third, M. Lehtonen, ‘Children’s literature in Finland’ (727–51), summariz- ing the overall picture of children’s literature, even if individual authors such as Zacharias Topelius and Tove Jansson have been treated elsewhere. In addition to being the editor of the whole work and co-operating with K. Laitinen for one of the Finnish-language chapters, George Schoolfield is the sole contributor to the whole section on Finland-Swedish literature, a rather impressive perform- ance. There is no separate chapter on women writers; like their male colleagues they are treated in sub-sections of the main chapters. Under the sub-heading ‘Women writers: Ostrobothnia and elsewhere’ in chapter 10, it simply states that ‘an eVort to create a separate history of women writers in Finland is futile; women have long been major voices in both literatures of the country, on an equal footing with men’; then follows a presentation of the appearance in the 1970s of a group of women writers in Ostrobothnia. Schoolfield closes his work on a positive note by saying that what is startling about ‘Swedish Finland’s’ cultural fate is the vigour of its literature, during a time when the proportional representation of Swedish-speakers in Fin- land’s populace has steadily decreased. A˚ . Bertenstam, ‘Svensk litteraturhistorisk bibliografi 114 (1995); med tilla¨gg och ra¨ttelser fo¨r tidigare a˚r’, Samlaren, 118, 1997[1998].2:1–125. Parnass, no. 6,isa special issue on Svenska Vitterhetssamfundet, the literary society for all Swedish classic writers; its latest publications include Haquin Spegel, Jacob Wallenberg, and the collected works of C. J. L. Almqvist. Lars Furuland, Bergslagen i litteraturen. Kommenterad bibliografi med en inledande litteratursociologisk uppsats (Avdelningen fo¨r litteratursoci- ologi, 37, SLIUU), Hedemora, Gidlunds, 264 pp., covers publications in book form from the 17th c. in the Bergslagen mining and forestry Literature 829 district of central Sweden. Its ten separate sections include both fiction and non-fiction: novels and short stories, poetry, literature for children and young people, memoirs, books of travels, and picture books, together with a selection of specialist literature and biblio- graphies. Litteraturvetenskap — en inledning, ed. StaVan Bergsten, Lund, Studentlitteratur, 190 pp., is an anthology of essays dealing with various theoretical approaches to the study of literature. The overwhelming impression is the great diversity of approaches in reading and interpreting a literary text. Anders Palm’s essay ‘Att tolka texten’ (155–69) stands out as the main summary of the possibilities inherent in the study of literature, not least in his warning that each so-called theory also entails its own limitation in interpreting the text. Perspektiv pa˚ litteraturvetenskapen, ed. Roger Holmstro¨m and John Sundholm (MLIA˚ A, 25), 175 pp., includes 13 papers based on a series of lectures during the academic session 1997–98, some of which make specific references to Swedish studies: R. Holmstro¨m, on literary scholarship and criticism exemplified by various contempo- rary scholars (7–17); F. Hertzberg, on Peter Weiss, Gunnar Bjo¨rling, and hypertext (47–56); A. Westerlund, on Hans Ruin (73–84); A. T. Pedersen, on preconceived ideas formed by models such as the classical review by H. Neiglick of K. A. Tavaststjerna’s Barndomsva¨nner and Lagercrantz’s 1958 biography of Stig Dagerman (95–109); M. O¨ sterlund, on feministic readings (135–49); C. Zilliacus, on his own approaches to short texts and to documentarism (151–58). Anders Cullhed, Minnesord. Littera¨ra essaër, Eslo¨v, Symposion, 208 pp., spans a wide area, both in time and geographically. The section ‘Svensk barock’ includes three essays: ‘Det svenska 1600–talsdramat’, originally a paper given in Ghent in 1997 (45–56); all other relevant essays have been previously published in journals or newspapers; ‘Samuel Columbus’ (57–61); ‘Skogeka¨r Bergbos Wenerid’ (62–66). The section ‘Svenska gestalter’ includes more recent writers: ‘Riksli- karen Levertin’ (69–73); ‘En melankoliker i Arkadien’ (74–78), on Artur Lundkvist’s poetry in Vit man, 1932; ‘Vennberg la¨ngtar till Egypten’ (79–84). Fredrik Boö¨k, Under stja¨rnorna. Ett ofullbordat sja¨lvpor- tra¨tt av Fredrik Boö¨k, ed. Nathan Shachar, Atlantis, 277 pp., is the unfinished autobiography of this leading literary scholar and critic, providing insight into his contradictory personality and his pro- German attitude up to the end of the Second World War. I. Algulin, ‘Litteraturteori — tradition och utveckling’, Algulin, Traditioner, 12–25. A. Pettersson, ‘En teori om litteratur och litteraturupplevelse’, Edda:116–28. J. Svedjedal, ‘Kritiska tankar. Om litteraturkritiken och det littera¨ra systemet’, TidLit, 27.1:49–61. T. Forser, ‘Tabloidi- seringen av det littera¨ra samtalet — om kritiken, dess villkor och former’, ib., 62–86, on the current position of literary criticism in the.

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