The article examines similarities between ”Glahns død. Et papir fra 1861”, i.e., the second part of Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan (1894), and Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1899). The comparative analysis demonstrates that the two texts have several common features both in terms of setting, thematic aspects and narrative technique. Both ”Glahns død” and Heart of Darkness take as a point of departure a riverboat journey into the jungle. Both texts thematize the differences between the European civilization and the “uncivilized” exotic world and focus on the contrasts between the civilized and the primitive life, the rational and the irrational behavior. Both stories are narrated by a male narrator personality that is strongly fascinated by another man, and in each case the text involves a partially unreliable witness type of narrator. The article describes some of these common features as modernist and confirms the position of both novels in early modernism.
ABSTRACT. The author of this article attempts to show how the theme of lack of identity figures in Scandinavian literature of the recent decades, especially in postmodernism, and partially also later. The absence of identity was a considerably frequent theme in modernism. According to many modernists the lack of identity was characteristic of the people of the twentieth century, and modernists usually regarded this phenomenon as tragic. This changed in the 1960s. Some modernist writers of the 1960s began to view the absence of identity in a more conciliatory way: their works featured a greater acceptance for the idea of an individual with no core. This movement away from the tragic conception toward a greater acceptance forms an important line of development in later Scandinavian literature. The article discusses a few selected texts which illustrate this development. The examples include texts by Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Dag Solstad, Peter Høeg and Erlend Loe.Det var egentlig ikke i det 20. århundrets litteratur at idéen om det identitetsløse menneske først ble tatt opp, som mange kunne forestille seg. Den går egentlig langt tilbake. Om man skulle nevne minst et eksempel fra nordisk litteratur fra 1800-tallet, ville det vaere ganske naturlig å anføre Henrik Ibsens drama Peer Gynt fra 1867 der denne idéen er legemliggjort i hovedpersonen og understreket med et velkjent bilde av en løk uten kjerne. Men det er helt klart at mangel på identitet først ble et utbredt emne i det 20. århundret, spesielt i den litteratur som vi kaller for modernistisk, eventuelt avantgardistisk. Ifølge mange modernister var det nettopp identitetsmangelen som kjennetegnet det 20. århundrets menneske, og modernistene betraktet vanligvis dette fenomenet som tragisk.
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Erlend Loe’s novel Stille dager i Mixing Part (2009, Quiet Days in Mixing Part) focuses on a marital crisis of a Norwegian couple on vacation in Germany. The husband, Bror Telemann, is a dramaturg who dreams of writing a major play, and he tries in vain to begin to write one. The novel is a third-person narrative, but it actually contains few narrative passages: most of the text consists of dialogues. The text is, in fact, a hybrid of two genres – part novel, part play. This seems to be a consciously chosen aesthetic strategy on Loe’s part. The main thematic aspects of Stille dager i Mixing Part are tied up with drama and theatre in various ways. This article shows how genre hybridity, aided by intertextual allusions, contributes to representing these main aspects.
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