När sjukt blir friskt och friskt sjukt. Pooneh Rohis Hölje och sjukdomsbegreppets innebörd

This article discusses how different notions of illness are portrayed in the Swedish-Iranian author Pooneh Rohi’s novel Hölje (2021). It notes the tendency to diagnose the main character, Mona, with postpartum psychosis, as discernible in the reception, but questions its suitability as a fruitful perspective for approaching the novel and the experience expressed here. Instead, a phenomenological perspective is established, focusing on how illness is perceived by the sufferer herself and what knowledge about the self, other people, and the world becomes possible to obtain in this way. Through this perspective, it becomes clear that the concepts of illness and health are given new meanings and connotations in the novel, as they are associated with the concepts of falseness and authenticity in a new and unconventional way. Thus, the novel can be read as a criticism both of biomedical science that diagnose and sort people into categories based on a medical understanding of illness, and of a broader cultural perception of what constitutes sick and healthy behaviour

Early stages of periphrastic passive formation in Old Swedish

This article discusses the construction [SBJ varda PTCP], which is considered an early example of a periphrastic passive, in the extant Old Swedish legal texts. It has been argued that it is a nascent passive construction, different from the fully-fledged passive in Present Day Swedish. Based on a corpus study of all occurrences of the construction across Swedish provincial laws I argue that it bears all the hallmarks of a grammaticalized passive construction, with two exceptions. Firstly, it allows a wider choice of thematic roles of the subject, secondly, its main pragmatic function is inactivization in the sense of Haspelmath (1990). The study is grounded in Diachronic Construction Grammar and utilizes the typology of thematic roles proposed by Van Valin and LaPolla (1997)

Introduction. Between Health and Illness. Literary conceptualizations of physical and mental suffering in contemporary Nordic literature

The present text serves as an introduction to the special issue of Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia, “Between Health and Illness,” which is devoted to contemporary discourse on health and illness in Nordic literatures. Even though Scandinavian countries rank highest in happiness and well-being, illness as a literary motif maintains constant popularity and interest among both writers and scholars. The editors provide brief presentations of each contribution, some of which originate from conference speeches held in December 2022 in Poznań

Sygdommen satte spor i os. Den pårørendes afsøgning af kropslige grænser og identitet i Hanne Ørstaviks Ti Amo (2020) og Amalie Smiths I CIVIL (2012)

Caring, writing and the desire for knowledge are deeply intertwined phenomena in Amalie Smith’s poetry collection I CIVIL and Hanne Ørstavik’s novel Ti Amo, both of which portray women in romantic relations with men who are cancer patients. Through depictions of the women’s initial attempts to maintain the closeness to their partners, the books explore the relational and somatic borderland between symbiosis and separation from the perspective of two informal caregivers. Taking a Lacanian approach, this borderland can be understood as a passage from the symbolic to the real which the women gain access to through their intense desire for knowledge and bodily experiences of jouissance and abjection. As informal caregivers for men who are unlikely to survive their illness, the women experience conflicting relational desires for both intimacy and distance. This article investigates how the passage from the symbolic to the real reintroduces the women to relational challenges from an early developmental stage and thus helps them solve the aforementioned conflict

Sjukdom i ord och bild. Inferno av August Strindberg och August Strindbergs Inferno av Fabian Göranson

Inferno (1897) is one of the most significant works in August Strindberg’s vast oeuvre. It has been subject to many interpretations but due to its multidimensionality it defies clear classification and therefore continues to arouse the interest of researchers. In many respects it can be considered as an illness narrative because the autobiographical story of August Strindberg who suspends his writing career and gives up his family life to dedicate himself to science is indeed to a great extent a retrospective study of a deep mental crisis or even a schizophrenic episode. The hero suffers from delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex, succumbs to hallucinations and becomes entangled in religious and philosophical speculations desperately seeking a way out of his spiritual hell. Strindberg’s work inspired Swedish illustrator Fabian Göranson who published his graphic novel August Strindbergs Inferno in 2010. The aim of the article is to look at, using selected examples, descriptions of physical and spiritual torments in Strindberg’s text and compare them with the corresponding scenes created by Göranson by means of images and words

Valuation and vulnerability. An analysis of the reception of two illness narratives in the contemporary Swedish literary landscape

The proliferation of autobiographical accounts of illness, or autopathographies, has attracted considerable scholarly interest. Nevertheless, a notable gap remains in our understanding of how these narratives are received and evaluated. This article addresses this gap by examining the dynamics of value negotiation surrounding two autobiographical illness narratives in Sweden: Kristina Sandberg’s En ensam plats (A Lonely Place, 2021) and Sara Meidell’s Ut ur min kropp (Out of My Body, 2022). Theoretically, the article is grounded in a constructivist framework of value. In addition to exploring how Sandberg and Meidell address the value question in their illness narratives, it presents a detailed analysis of reviews and debate articles to uncover the underlying values expressed in the reception of these narratives. The analysis reveals that the value discussions center on aesthetic, emotional, social, and ethical dimensions, reflecting broader cultural debates about illness and its representation. While Sandberg’s narrative raises questions about the portrayal of illness experiences, Meidell’s narrative provokes discussions about its potential impact on readers. In sum, this article highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of value creation and negotiation pertaining to illness narratives

Patologins teologi. Om sjukdom, synd och frälsning hos Birgitta Trotzig

This article has two aims. Firstly, it makes an attempt to shed new light on the representation of sickness in Birgitta Trotzig’s (1929–2011) writings. Secondly, the article, by using its analyses of Trotzig, tries to draw some theoretical conclusions concerning the possibilities of applying a theology of pathology in literary studies. While earlier scholars have interpreted Trotzig’s depiction of sickness by means of secular intertexts, the starting point of this article is Trotzig’s adopting of Christian anthropology as her untranscendable hermeneutic horizon. Thus, it is argued, sickness in her writings should primarily be related to theological contexts. By close reading of a representative text passage, the opening scene of Trotzig’s best known novel Dykungens dotter (The Marsh King’s Daughter, 1985), the article explores which contexts within Christian theology of sickness that would be specially fertile for an interpretation of her sickness discourse. The analyses reveal four theological notions of sickness as intertextually present in Trotzig’s narration: Augustine’s concupiscence, Sören Kierkegaard’s dispair, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s decomposition, and Eugen Drewermann’s neurosis. The main theoretical conclusions of the analyses are: (a) that the theological notions of sickness to a high degree differ from a ”natural” experience as well as from the biblical sources, (b) that these notions can contradict each other and generate conceptual conflicts, and (c) that the notions therefore, when applied in literary studies, demand strong hermeneutic control

”I kamp og på flugt”. Om H. C. Andersens Den lille havfrue gendigtet som en beretning om handicap

The present paper offers a study of two contemporary English-language reworkings of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Little Mermaid: one by the M. Sickafoose (1995) and one by A. Woon (2016), from the perspective of disability theory. In each of them, the original tale has been reframed into a story featuring a young girl striving to approach her inability to walk while drawing inspiration from the original tale. Due to their use of intertextuality, the texts to be analyzed are discussed as examples of the so-called postmodern fairy tale, aimed at interrogating the relevance of classic fairy tales through the act of retelling. In spite of similarities in terms of theme, plot outline and character construction, the versions selected for the analysis differ in terms of ending scenarios, offering two complementary messages concerning Andersen’s tale. While exploring the changes in the overall understanding of disability underlying the original and the two contemporary versions, the analysis aims to determine the potential of Andersen’s fairy tale as a possible frame of reference while confronting handicap in the social reality of the present era