Description
Book SynopsisAn exploration of Scandinavian literature and art. It guides us through the most startling works created by the writers and artists of Scandinavia over the past two centuries. It helps readers gain fresh perspectives on canonical giants such as Soren Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Edvard Munch, Knut Hamsun, and Ingmar Bergman.
Trade ReviewRunner-Up for the 2009 Atlantic's Best Book of the Year One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 "To take issue with Ibsen's creations ... is of course to pay tribute to their vitality, their instructive meaningfulness. The allusion here, provides a perfect example of that remarkable kinship, that constant intellectual exchange, between Scandinavian artists in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, between those creative spirits of whom later writers and painters from the same provenance felt themselves the heirs. This interconnectedness is integral to Weinstein's ambitious new account of 'the breakthrough of Scandinavian literature and art, from Ibsen to Bergman', though his concern is principally with the congruity of his subjects' preoccupations and artistic choices... [Weinstein's] style can rise to impressive levels of eloquence, and never more so than when he is writing of painting."--Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement "The most ambitious American effort in memory to view Scandinavian culture whole. It unfolds as if the head of our National Book Awards had denounced Scandinavian culture as too hermetic to merit attention in the United States. Almost in reply to such an imagined slight, Weinstein celebrates his subject for projecting a globally influential ethos that transcends any role as merely an occasional producer of world-class artists."--Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education "This weighty, detailed, and authoritative but lively tome elucidates the revolution Scandinavia wrought in the world of arts and letters beginning in the 19th century... Weinstein's is a brilliantly told story of how an underpopulated region developed from repressive backwater to cutting-edge artistic fulcrum."--Atlantic "This is comparative scholarship at its best."--Choice
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2: Power 10 A. Speaking God: Kierkegaard and Lagerkvist 10 B. The Play of Patriarchy: Ibsen and Strindberg 41 i. Child's Play: The Cradle Song in Strindberg's The Father 45 ii. Metamorphosis in Ibsen's Little Eyolf 74 C. The Powers and the Self: Strindberg's Inferno and Gustafsson's Tennis Players 111 CHAPTER 3: Boundary Smashing 161 A. Going Through the Wall: Shakespeare, Strindberg, Josephson, Bergman 161 B. The Child's Revenge: Kierkegaard, Ibsen, Lindgren, Cronqvist 197 C. Hamsun's Hunger and Writing 246 D. Stories of Fusion: Vesaas's The Ice Palace and Bergman's Persona 273 CHAPTER 4: Graphing Power 313 A. Breakthrough, Time, and Flux in Edvard Munch (the Cubist) 313 B. The Case of Ernst Josephson 352 CHAPTER 5: Concluding the Book 439 Introducing Strindberg the Painter Notes 461 Index 507
