Search

”Reports from the Hospital. The Representation of Nurses in Tegnehanne’s Blod, svette og tress-is (2017) and Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen’s Den lange vakta. En historie fra et helsevesen på bristepunktet (2021)” This article analyses how nurses are represented in two contemporary Norwegian texts: Blod, svette og tress-is (Blood, Sweat and Neapolitan Ice Cream), a hybrid of verbal and graphic narrative by Tegnehanne (2017), and Den lange vakta. En historie fra et helsevesen på bristepunktet (The Long Shift. A Story from the Health Sector at Bursting Point), a non-fiction text by Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen (2021). The analysis is based on a combination of close reading and a contextual perspective, for instance, on the public discourse about nurses. In some recent Covid-19-related newspaper articles, nurses are represented by using war metaphors and angel symbols. The two selected texts, in contrast, emphasise the nurse as professional actor and human being. Being a nurse is represented as a valuable and giving profession. Simultaneously, by featuring characteristics of the literary report genre, both works shed a critical light on working conditions in the care sector and their effects on the care worker. Thus, this article argues that the analysis of how healthcare professionals are represented in literature can contribute to the developing field of medical humanities by adding a more institutionalized perspective on (the treatment of) illness and the patient.

Autonomy is a central category in the aesthetics of modernity. It is connected with the historical processes that determines the place of art in society and with the development within particular art forms. As a methodological principle it has been important in the study of art and literature. Autonomy has been interpreted in many ways, and several aspects have been the subject of intense debate. This essay tries to shed some light on the matter by investigating three major figures in Norwegian poetry: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910), Claes Gill (1910–1973) and Georg Johannesen (1931–2005). Together they cover a period of over 150 years, from poetic realism to postmodernism. In their work we focus on the constellation of poetry and rhetoric. We ask how the tension between the two can take the form of a confrontation between autonomy and heteronomy, and how it makes possible certain dialectical interrelations between the two opposites.

The article refers to Leo Eitinger, famous Norwegian psychiatrist and humanist as author of essays and other popular science texts; focusing on Eitinger's issues as well as his style and rhetorical methods. The article depicts Leo Eitinger's cultural context regarding his background as Czechoslovak refugee and Holocaust survivor, his efforts beeing minority and human rights in general.

A Way Out of the World. Death, Language, and Post-structuralism in Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle In this article, I present a close reading of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle. My point of departure is Knausgård’s reflections upon death presented in the very first pages of the first of this six-volume novel. I read these reflections as thoughts regarding the issue of form and content, and as an introduction to one of the main themes in the novel. Thus, I argue that, throughout this novel, Knausgård tries to unite form and content, and that this is the central struggle referred to in the work’s title.

Knut Hamsun was a very popular writer between the two world wars in many countries. It was also during this period that the first and only monograph in the Czech language on Hamsun's life and works was written. The book is called Knut Hamsun a soudobá beletrie norská (1933, Knut Hamsun and Contemporary Norwegian Fiction) and was published by the translator, essayist and literary historian Gustav Pallas (1882-1964). The author of this article focuses on two books by Pallas in which he deals with Hamsun. The article argues that Pallas's studies of Hamsun's life and works, despite being quite nuanced, perpetuate some of the common stereotypes in the Czechoslovak reception of Hamsun. Among others, Pallas sees Hamsun's characters as archetypes of Scandinavian people, describing them as an extension of Scandinavian nature.

The starting point for this article is the tendency in recent Norwegian children's and Ya fiction to thematize cultural encounters in an increasingly multicultural and globalized world. The picturebook Little Miss Eye Flap (Skylappjenta, 2009) written by the Pakistani-Norwegian author and actor Iram Haq and illustrated by Endre Skandfer, presents a modern version of traditional folktales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. However, in the traditional structure of home -- away -- home this story places particular emphasis on the phase of homelessness, not providing any safe return to harmony. This condition of liminal space between cultures is discussed in light of the concepts of reflexive identity (Anthony Giddens), cultural identity (Stuart Hall) and hybridity (Homi K. Bhabha). Written by an author who herself comes from a multicultural background, and who presents the book as partly autobiographical, Little Miss Eye Flap offers a double perspective on questions of cultural identity, including critical views on Norwegian as well as Pakistani tradition. The book ends by showing Miss Eye Flaps in a big open space, where it is more certain what she leaves behind than what the future will bring. The open ending and the focalization of the girl with the multicultural background opens up to a discursive space where new hybrid identities may be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]