THE STORY: The action takes place on the stage of the Dagmar Theatre, in Copenhagen, where Strindberg and his estranged wife, Siri, are preparing the first performance of his short play The Stronger . With Siri is her friend Marie Caroline Da
The recent sesquicentennial of August Strindberg's (1849-1912) birth was an appropriate occasion for investigating the role of this towering figure in Nordic literature. By Eugene O'Neill once labeled the most modern of moderns, Strindberg the playwright has commanded a prophetic influence on 20th century drama and theater, and his voluminous production in several other genres continues to constitute a watershed and some of the highpoints in Swedish letters. Yet, Strindberg remains as controversial today as he was in his lifetime. The nature and degree of his modernity are still under discussion, and so is the impact of his remarkable genre-proliferation and border-transgressing Swedishness. Once considered too unruly for the pillars of society and too pious for the radicals, his artistic and existential points of gravity remain in critical dispute. Generally subjected to traditional modes of inquiry, Strindberg's complexity calls for new critical approaches. Strindberg and the Other brings together scholars, younger and older, from Scandinavia and abroad, who either venture such new approaches or engage their practitioners in fruitful dialogue. Especially promising among the volume's methodological and theoretical propositions is the notion of the 'other' and 'otherness.' Indeed, the image of August Strindberg himself is quite an-other at this millennium than it was just half a century ago.
Documentary literature became an international phenomenon on the cultural and political scene in the 1960s and 1970s. From the American New Journalism in works by such writers as Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe to the German Industriereportagen by Günther Wallraff and others, documentarism presented a variety of controversial interplays between facts and fiction labeled as 'faction, ' 'fables of fact' or the like. Scandinavian literature made important and unique contributions to this international movement, and Documentarism in Scandinavian Literature is the first comprehensive volume ever published on the historical significance and future implications of these Nordic dimensions of documentarism and their international context. The volume is centered on Swedish documentary literature in the 1960s and 1970s -- and on such major writers as Per Olov Enquist, Sven Lindqvist, Sara Lidman, and Per Olov Sundman -- but the powerful voices of Danish writer Thorkild Hansen and Norwegian novelist Dag Solstad are also heard in its critical concert. The diversity of Documentarism in Scandinavian Literature is further enhanced by surveys and analyses of the historical background for more recent works and activities, and by theoretical inquiries into the epistemological status of documentarism, its theoretical, narrative, and theatrical devices, its predominant genres and links to other modes of mass communication, and its political affiliations and implications. For readers already familiar with its subject matter Documentarism in Scandinavian Literature offers an opportunity to revisit and recontextualize a crucial moment in their recent cultural past. For readers who have yet to be exposed to documentary works of fiction, the volume presents a timely theoretical, historical, and critical introduction to the key problematics and potentials of their novel field of interest. Whether viewed as part of the past or part of the present, documentarism remains an intellectual challenge, which this volume is aimed at addressing. Documentarism in Scandinavian Literature is edited by two Scandinavian scholars living abroad, and its essays are written by senior and junior scholars and critics from Scandinavia, Europe, and America; an interview with Per Olov Enquist and an autobio-graphical piece by Sven Lindqvist complete the volume.
The first collection by Sweden's foremost contemporary playwright NIGHT OF THE TRIBADES (1975) centres around the triangular relationship between August Strindberg, the actress Marie Caroline David and Siri von Essen. It has been translated into twenty languages including a short run on Broadway. THE IMAGE MAKERS (1998) deals with Selma Lagerlof's father and his alcoholism whilst THE RAIN MAKERS is a fascinating study of Hans Christian Anderson. THE HOUR OF THE LYNX: "Enquist's play, feelingly translated from the Swedish offers a profound exploration of spirituality, love and faith within a text that is grippingly dramatic, unfailingly absorbing and often upliftingly lyrical." "At a time when young writers were looking for new forms of literary expression, Enquist settled for an investigative style, and attempt to reconstruct events reported to have happened, but where the truth is often too inaccessible... it was a style that was to remain Enquist's literary landmark characterising both his novels and his plays" Contemporary World Authors ed. Tracey Chevalier
Once part of the Kalmar Union-along with Denmark and Norway-the Kingdom of Sweden broke free in order to govern itself in the early 1500s, and for more than a century afterwards it was a force to be reckoned with. At its peak, it was twice the size that it is today, but with the secession of Finland in 1809 and the rise of Russia, Sweden changed its path and instead turned toward neutrality and a peaceful existence. Today, Sweden boasts a healthy economy, and it is an important member of the European Union, as well a major contributor to international activities. The A to Z of Sweden relates the history of Sweden through a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, and institutions, this dictionary provides information ranging from politics to economics, from education to religion, and from music to literature.
"Many fictional works have real, historical authors as characters. Great national literary icons like Virgil and Shakespeare have been fictionalized in novels, plays, poems, movies, and operas. This fashion might seem typically postmodern, the reverse side of the contention that the Author is Dead; but this collection of essays shows that the representation of historical authors as characters can boast of a considerable history, and may well constitute a genre in its own right. This volume brings together a collection of articles on appropriations of historical authors, written by experts in a wide range of major Western literatures."--BOOK JACKET.
New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.
When everything began so well, how could it turn out so badly? A blisteringly frank autobiographical novel by Sweden's great man of letters - for readers of K. O. Knausgaard's My Struggle. "Some life. Some novel . . . Wonderful, brave, evocative . . . It is a remarkable story, and Enquist is remarkably frank in narrating every last detail" Herald What was it about Hjoggböle, a farming village in the northernmost part of Sweden, that created so many idiots - and writers? There was nothing to indicate that P.O. Enquist would be stricken by an addiction to writing. Nothing in his family - honest, hardworking people. Not a trace of poetry. And yet he worked his way, via journalism, novels and plays, to the centre of Swedish politics and cultural life. His books garnered prize after prize. His plays ran for decades and premiered on Broadway. Why then, living with a new wife in Paris, does he hole up in their palatial Champes-Élysées apartment, talking only to his cat? How is it that he wakes to find himself in an uncoupled carriage on a railway siding in Hamburg, two - or was it three? - days after the first-night party finished? And what is it that drives him to run shoeless through the deep January snow of an Icelandic plain, leaving the lights of the drying out clinic far behind? Narrating in the third person, as if he were merely a character in the eventful, perplexing and ultimately triumphantly redemptive drama of his own life, P.O. Enquist is as elliptical as Karl Ove Knausgaard is exhaustive. Clear-eyed, rueful, written with elegance and humour, this is the singular story of a remarkable man.
(Theatre World). Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway and off-Broadway season, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, has become a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacement producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much, much more. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, listings of annual Shakespeare festivals and major drama awards.
Existing critical traditions fail to fully account for the impact of Austrian director, and 2009 Cannes Palm d'Or winner, Michael Haneke's films, situated as they are between intellectual projects and popular entertainments. In this first English-language introduction to, and critical analysis of, his work, each of Haneke's eight feature films are considered in detail. Particular attention is given to what the author terms Michael Haneke's 'ethical cinema' and the unique impact of these films upon their audiences. Drawing on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Stanley Cavell, Catherine Wheatley, introduces a new way of marrying film and moral philosophy, which explicitly examines the ethics of the film viewing experience. Haneke's films offer the viewer great freedom whilst simultaneously imposing a considerable burden of responsibility. How Haneke achieves this break with more conventional spectatorship models, and what its far-reaching implications are for film theory in general, constitute the principal subject of this book.