Från nationalhjälte till rikstyrann: Karl XII i det svenska 1800-talets litterära minneskultur

The overall aim of the article is to investigate the structure and dynamics of the Swedish cultural memory in the nineteenth century. According to the micrological methodology, recommended by leading theorists of cultural memory, the article focuses on five representative texts: three Romantic poems written to the 1818 centenary of Charles XII’s death (Bernhard von Beskow’s “Carl den Tolfte,” Erik Gustaf Geijer’s “Ord till Karl XII:s marsch vid Narva,” and Esaias Tegnér’s “Carl XII”), and two short stories, written in the last decade of the nineteenth century, both depicting the events immediately after the death of Charles XII and thus thematising the cultural memory of the king as communicative memory (Verner von Heidenstam’s “En hjältes likfärd” and August Strindberg’s “Vid Likvakan i Tistedalen”). Analysing the three poems, the article makes an attempt to reconstruct the degree zero structure of the Swedish cultural memory in the nineteenth century. It is argued that the poems’ cultural memory has an eclectic character and requires a kind of archaeological approach. In the first step, the article identifies a tissue of elements, belonging to the pre-industrial cultural memory: cult of the death, burial scenery, relic, fame, ritualization, militarization. The poems subordinate this archaic memory system to the structures which are the products of the nineteenth century and originate from one single social process: industrialization. In the second step, the main part of the article, these industrial components of the poems’ cultural memory are analysed: subjectification, temporalization, historicization, productivization, nationalization, and finally mythicization – the final component is investigated using both Barthesian and Jungian conceptual apparatus. In the third and last step, the article studies the development of this degree zero memory structure during the nineteenth century. Two main evolutionary trends, rooted in two different modifications of the Kantian notion of the Self, are distinguished. The first trend, exemplified by the short story of Heidenstam, implies an existential psychologization of the industrial cultural memory. The second trend, represented by the short story of Strindberg, is based on a naturalistic correction of the Kantian Self and executes a subversive demythicization of the Romantic Charles XII-myth

Astrid Lindgren’s genre equilibristics

The paper examines genre strategies in a number of children’s books by the well-known Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren. Drawing on the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss, Aidan Chambers and Reinbert Tabbert, the paper demonstrates that the stormy reception of Pippi Longstocking (1945), prompted by a review by Professor John Landquist, had principally genre-related grounds. The book made readers feel a sense of provocation because it challenged their archetextual horizon of expectations by evoking certain traditional genres and simultaneously twisting them in almost anarchic ways. In later books Astrid Lindgren makes a more elaborate use of classic genre structures. She generally chooses one well-known archetext as the generic dominant and allows it to interact with a set of other genres, thus calling forth the main aesthetic effect of the book from the archetextual dialogue between the dominant and the accompanying genres. The paper specifically investigates this polyphonic method in three of Lindgren’s most popular books. In All about the Bullerby children (1947–52) the generic dominant is idyll and the subordinated archetexts satire, parody, burlesque, farce, fairy tale and ballad. Mio, my son (1954) can be considered as an artistic fairy tale (Kunstmärchen), this dominant genre correlating with some other interwoven archetexts: apocryphal gospel, myth, legend, heroic tale and idyll. Finally, the generic dominant of Ronia, the robber’s daughter (1981) – a novel about the adventures of a band of robbers (Räuberroman) – finds its archetextual counterparts in folktale, popular legend, myth, burlesque, fantasy and Bildungsroman, among others

Genreekvilibristen Astrid Lindgren

The paper examines genre strategies in a number of children’s books by the well-known Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren. Drawing on the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss, Aidan Chambers and Reinbert Tabbert, the paper demonstrates that the stormy reception of Pippi Longstocking (1945), prompted by a review by Professor John Landquist, had principally genre-related grounds. The book made readers feel a sense of provocation because it challenged their archetextual horizon of expectations by evoking certain traditional genres and simultaneously twisting them in almost anarchic ways. In later books Astrid Lindgren makes a more elaborate use of classic genre structures. She generally chooses one well-known archetext as the generic dominant and allows it to interact with a set of other genres, thus calling forth the main aesthetic effect of the book from the archetextual dialogue between the dominant and the accompanying genres. The paper specifically investigates this polyphonic method in three of Lindgren’s most popular books. In All about the Bullerby children (1947–52) the generic dominant is idyll and the subordinated archetexts satire, parody, burlesque, farce, fairy tale and ballad. Mio, my son (1954) can be considered as an artistic fairy tale (Kunstmärchen), this dominant genre correlating with some other interwoven archetexts: apocryphal gospel, myth, legend, heroic tale and idyll. Finally, the generic dominant of Ronia, the robber’s daughter (1981) – a novel about the adventures of a band of robbers (Räuberroman) – finds its archetextual counterparts in folktale, popular legend, myth, burlesque, fantasy and Bildungsroman, among others

Demythicisation and remythicisation of the cultural memory in Snoilsky’s "Svenska bilder"

The article analyses the relationship between cultural memory and myth in Carl Snoilsky’s poetic cycle "Svenska bilder" (Swedish Pictures). According to theoreticians, one of the primary goals of the 19th-century cultural memory is to consolidate the nation-state. Politically conservative Swedish Romanticism achieves this goal by turning Swedish cultural memory into a kind of national mythology, combining mythical and historical elements. In his cycle, Snoilsky, a democrat and a liberal, revises the Romantic construction of Swedish national memory by demythicising it. However, the author’s patriotic intentions often lead to the remythicisation of the democratically calibrated events and figures featuring in the cycle. The article analyses this dialectic, drawing on the theories of myth by Roland Barthes, Northrop Frye, Carl Gustav Jung, Ernst Casssirer, Mircea Eliade, Max Weber, et al., and supporting them with the intertextual apparatus of Gérard Genette. Among the most important demythicising strategies in "Svenska bilder" are mimetic devaluation, archetypal deheroisation, semiotic denaturalisation, and secularisation. Remythicisation in Snoilsky’s cycle is realised either by taking over selected elements of Romantic cultural memory, or by subjecting liberal cultural memory to mythicising strategies. The most important of these include mimetic valuation, archetypal heroisation, semiotic naturalisation, and sacralisation, i.e. strategies that are in dialectical opposition to the distinguished strategies of demythicisation

Between baroque and modernism : some tendencies in Swedish translations of Szymborska’s poetry

The article investigates some main tendencies in the translations of Wisława Szymborska’s poetry into Swedish. According to scholars of Polish literature, the poetical work of Szymborska can be placed within two literary traditions: on the one hand modernism, on the other hand pre-modern literature with a heavy accent on baroque aesthetics. The leading thesis of this article is that Swedish translators strenghten the modernistic character of the poems while weakening their baroque features. The line of argument comprises four stages. In the first stage, the history of Swedish translations of Szymborska’s poetry is summarized. In the second stage, it is demonstrated that Swedish translators successfully reproduce the majority of Szymborska’s modernistic devices (metaphor, free verse, depersonalization, polyphony, colloquialism etc.). In the third stage, it is analogously shown that Szymborska’s baroque devices (conceit, pun, play with rhetorical figures and intertextual artefacts etc.) tend to abate or simply disappear in Swedish translations. In the fourth stage finally, the translatory practice of substituting Szymborska’s baroque components is examined. Whether the translators try to find literal equivalents to her conceits or turn them into colloquial Swedish idiom, the article argues, the result of both strategies is an intensification of the poems’ modernistic style

Poly[bis­(μ3-acetato-κ4 O,O′:O:O′)bis­(μ2-acetato-κ3 O,O′:O)(μ2-2,5-dimethyl­benzene-1,4-diol-κ2 O:O′)dilead(II)]

The title compound, [Pb2(C2H3O2)4(C8H10O2)]n, has a polymeric structure, with acetatolead(II) chains and 2,5-dimethyl­benzene-1,4-diol mol­ecules forming bridges between two PbII ions from neighbouring chains. Each PbII centre is surrounded by eight O atoms; four belong to bidentate acetate ions, three to neighbouring bridging acetate groups and one to the 2,5-dimethyl­benzene-1,4-diol mol­ecule. The PbII ions are chelated symmetrically and asymmetrically by acetate ligands. The coordination environment of the PbII ion can be described as a hemidirected PbIIO6 core with the empty space around the metal ion filled by the stereochemically active 6s 2 electron pair and two longer Pb—O contacts. The Pb—O distances are in the range of 2.355 (3)–2.994 (3) Å. Additionally, the crystal structure is stabilized by O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Human Re-identification System On Highly Parallel GPU and CPU Architectures

International audienceThe paper presents a new approach to the human reindetification problem using covariance features. In many cases, a distance operator between signatures, based on generalized eigenvalues, has to be computed efficiently, especially once the real-time response time is expected from the system. This is a challenging problem as many procedures are in fact computationally intensive tasks and must be repeated constantly. To deal with this problem we have successfully designed and then tested a new video surveillance system. To obtain the required high efficiency we took the advantage of highly parallel computing architectures such as FPGA, GPU and CPU units to perform calculations. However, we had to propose a new GPU-based implementation of the distance operator for querying the example database. Thus, in this paper we present experimental evaluation of the proposed solution in the light of the database response time depending on its size

Smith equivalence and finite Oliver groups with Laitinen number 0 or 1

In 1960, Paul A. Smith asked the following question. If a finite group G acts smoothly on a sphere with exactly two fixed points, is it true that the tangent G-modules at the two points are always isomorphic? We focus on the case G is an Oliver group and we present a classification of finite Oliver groups G with Laitinen number a_G = 0 or 1. Then we show that the Smith Isomorphism Question has a negative answer and a_G > 1 for any finite Oliver group G of odd order, and for any finite Oliver group G with a cyclic quotient of order pq for two distinct odd primes p and q. We also show that with just one unknown case, this question has a negative answer for any finite nonsolvable gap group G with a_G > 1. Moreover, we deduce that for a finite nonabelian simple group G, the answer to the Smith Isomorphism Question is affirmative if and only if a_G = 0 or 1.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol2/agt-2-35.abs.htm

Variation of chemical compounds in wild Heliconiini reveals ecological factors involved in the evolution of chemical defenses in mimetic butterflies.

Evolutionary convergence of color pattern in mimetic species is tightly linked with the evolution of chemical defenses. Yet, the evolutionary forces involved in natural variations of chemical defenses in aposematic species are still understudied. Herein, we focus on the evolution of chemical defenses in the butterfly tribe Heliconiini. These neotropical butterflies contain large concentrations of cyanogenic glucosides, cyanide-releasing compounds acting as predator deterrent. These compounds are either de novo synthesized or sequestered from their Passiflora host plant, so that their concentrations may depend on host plant specialization and host plant availability. We sampled 375 wild Heliconiini butterflies across Central and South America, covering 43% species of this clade, and quantify individual variations in the different CGs using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. We detected new compounds and important variations in chemical defenses both within and among species. Based on the most recent and well-studied phylogeny of Heliconiini, we show that ecological factors such as mimetic interactions and host plant specialization have a significant association with chemical profiles, but these effects are largely explained by phylogenetic relationships. Our results therefore suggest that shared ancestries largely contribute to chemical defense variation, pointing out at the interaction between historical and ecological factors in the evolution of Müllerian mimicry