This book examines the significance of cabins and other temporary seasonal dwellings as important symbols in modern Norwegian cultural and literary history. The author uses Michel Foucault’s notion of the “heterotopia”—an actual place that also functions imaginatively as a kind of real-world utopia—to examine how cabins have signified differently during successive periods, from an Enlightenment trope of simplicity and moderation, through the rise of tourism, into a period of increasing individualism and alienation from nature. For each period discussed, the author relates a widely recognized real world cabin to a cluster of thematically related literary texts from a wide variety of genres. Cabins in Modern Norwegian Literature considers both central canonical works, such as Camilla Collett’s The District Governor’s Daughters, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s Synnøve Solbakken, Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken, and Knut Hamsun’s The Growth of the Soil, as well as less widely known literary works and texts from marginal genres such as hunting narratives and crime fiction. In addition, the book contains analyses of a few key films from the contemporary period that also activate the cabin as a motif. The central argument is that while Norwegians today tend to think of cabin culture as essentially unchanging over a long span of time, it has in fact changed dramatically over the past two hundred years, and that it is an extremely rich and complex cultural phenomenon deeply imbedded in the construction of national identity.
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Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Seter as a Transgressive Allegorical Home 2. Cabin, Class, and Nation 3. The Hunter’s Cabin as Anti-Modern Retreat 4. The Golden Age of Cabin Therapy 5. The Post-Cabin in Late Modernity Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
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With Cabins in Modern Norwegian Literature, Ellen Rees offers a substantial addition to this developing area of inquiry. She has written a book that not only deals with a highly interesting place in Norwegian culture, but which is also accessible. Ree's book is structured in a synchronic and pedagogical way with ample recapitulation and comparison, guiding the reader through the history of the cabin. Accompanying Rees to the cabins of Norwegian literature is to embark on a journey that is inspiring and pleasurable alike.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781611476484
Publisert
2014-03-06
Utgiver
Vendor
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Vekt
449 gr
Høyde
236 mm
Bredde
159 mm
Dybde
20 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
208

Forfatter

Biographical note

Ellen Rees is associate professor at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Ibsen Studies.