The Dream of the North

Northern Europe and North America have dominated the world stage for more than two centuries. Using a wide range of sources, this book provides the first coherent account from a multi-national perspective of the ideas and perceptions that, from the Renaissance onwards, fuelled the North’s rise to prominence, and enabled it to rival the traditional cultural and political hegemony of the South. This includes not only the fascinating conquest of the polar regions, but also the religious upheaval of the Reformation, the changing view of nature engendered by Romanticism, and, not least, the revival of ancient Nordic and Celtic culture. Finally, the book offers an indispensable historical background to current events in the Far North, where the past and the future meet in a complex web of dramatic environmental concerns, the exploitation of natural resources, and the strategies of politics and commerce

The Transgressive Narratives of Hamsun's In Wonderland

The article focuses on the transgressive quality of Hamsun’s In Wonderland, that is on the book’s variety of literary genres and narrative techniques, and on the narrator’s equally transgressive presentation of himself. To examine these qualities more specifically, the paper discusses to what extent Hamsun’s travelogue is indebted to the novel that, according to Martin Nag, was essential for Hamsun’s journey to the Caucasus, namely Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time(1840). This will include an investigation of similarities of genre as well as similarities between Lermontov’s protagonist Pechorin and the narrator in In Wonderland, both of whom are discussed in relation to the Russian tradition of so-called “superfluous men”.Artikkelen fokuserer på de grenseoverskridende særtrekkene ved Hamsuns I Eventyrland, dvs. på bokens varierte bruk av litterære sjangre og narrative teknikker, og på fortellerens like grenseoverskridende fremstilling av seg selv. For å undersøke disse særtrekkene mer spesifikt, diskuterer artikkelen i hvilken grad Hamsuns reisebeskrivelse er påvirket av romanen som ifølge Martin Nag var avgjørende for Hamsun reise til Kaukasus, nemlig Mikhail Lermontovs Vår tids helt(1840). Dette vil bl.a. innebære en undersøkelse av genrelikheter så vel som likheter mellom Lermontovs hovedskikkelse Petsjorin og fortelleren i I eventyrland, som begge blir diskutert i forhold til den russiske tradisjonen for det såkalte «overflødige menneske»

Time in The Rainbow and Women in Love: From Organic Flow to Mechanical Jam

Living in a period of violent social and cultural tensions, Lawrence struggled to make sense of several mutually incompatible, or at least contradictory, concepts of time. Firstly, his upbringing provided him with a traditional Biblical view, which ultimately rested on an act of faith, and whose ideas of apocalypse and millennium had essentially nothing to do with a rational or scientific development, but rather with the belief in an intervening god – a figure over and above history itself. S..

D.H. Lawrence between the Relative and the Absolute: From Religion and Science to Art and Life

The paper will first of all attempt to examine Lawrence’s relationship with the relative and the absolute in the context of the intellectual climate around the turn of the century. The focus here will be primarily on the two institutions that claimed to provide absolute answers, namely religion and science, and on Lawrence’s response to and liberation from them. Following Lawrence’s intellectual development as expressed through such non-fictional works as Study of Thomas Hardy, “The Crown”, “On Being Religious” and ultimately Apocalypse, the paper will also explore the extent to which his thinking around this issue develops or changes over time. As a preliminary conclusion, it seems that Lawrence throughout his life retains a fundamentally anarchic stance, rejecting the idea of the absolute as hostile to life, whose fundamental characteristic is precisely the opposite: dynamic, totalising, all-encompassing and ever-changing. Furthermore, art is introduced as an expression of the only reconciliation between a continuous stream of vital impulses, but like life itself art too is only “complete for the moment” (STH, 59), i.e. a perpetual work in progress

D. H. Lawrence between the Relative and the Absolute: From Religion and Science to Art and Life

The paper will first of all attempt to examine Lawrence’s relationship to the concepts of the relative and the absolute in the context of the intellectual climate around the turn of the century. The focus here will be primarily on the two institutions that claimed to provide absolute answers, namely religion and science, and on Lawrence’s response to and liberation from them. Following Lawrence’s intellectual development as expressed through such non-fictional works as Study of Thomas Hardy, “The Crown,” “On Being Religious” and ultimately Apocalypse, the paper will also explore the extent to which his thinking around this issue develops or changes over time. As a preliminary conclusion, it would seem that Lawrence throughout his life retains a fundamentally anarchic stance, rejecting the idea of the absolute as hostile to life, whose fundamental characteristic is precisely the opposite: dynamic, totalising, all-encompassing and ever-changing. Furthermore, while art is introduced as an expression of the only possible reconciliation between a continuous stream of vital impulses, like life itself art too is only “complete for the moment” (STH 59), i.e. a perpetual work in progress

When Science Came to the Arctic : Constantine Phipps’s Expedition to Spitsbergen in 1773

The article discusses Constantine Phipps’s expedition to Spitsbergen in 1773 and the extent to which it may be regarded as introducing a new and scientific discourse with respect to the Arctic. Phipps appears to be the first Arctic explorer who comes to the region with a modern, scientific mind, and the first to fully reflect a scientific approach to it in the report he writes and publishes on his return. Thus, although the background of the expedition was political and strategic, he may be said to have pioneered a view of the Arctic as being above narrow, nationalist interests. Similarly, it is argued that Phipps’s scientific approach paradoxically also heralds the aesthetic dimension of the Romantic period in the region. The article also compares Phipps’s expedition with those of Captain Cook, which were taking place at the same time

Utsyn frå utkanten: Vinje, Hamsun og det anglo-amerikanske

I 1863 gjev Aasmund Olavsson Vinje ut boka A Norseman’s Views of Britain and the British, basert på eit års opphald i landet – fyrst to-tre månader i England og resten i Skottland. Ti år seinare, dvs. tre år etter at Vinje har gått bort, kjem den norske utgåva, Bretland og Britarne, som Vinje sjølv hadde omsett omtrent to tredelar av, og som stortingsstenograf Halfdan Halvorsen hadde sluttført. I 1889 viser ei ny stjerne seg på den litterære himmelen med boka Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv. Boka kjem ut i København, og forfattaren er Knut Hamsun, som nett er heimkomen etter å ha budd til saman meir enn fire år i Amerika

The King in Exile: Ecocriticism, Lawrence and Animals

According to Timothy Morton Lawrence’s “ecological awareness” has a fivefold basis: a rousseauesque critique of civilization, the cultural pessimism of the late nineteenth century, the experience of growing up in an environment profoundly affected by industrialization, his religious background, and the First World War. With this point of departure, he sought alternative solutions in the periphery as opposed to the centre, in the body rather than the spirit, and in instinct rather than the intellect. Lawrence’s ambition was to achieve a “reintegration of matter and spirit” (James Krasner) that required a redefinition of man’s traditional supremacy in relation to the rest of creation. Thus long before the modern ecological awareness Lawrence preaches a new and alternative approach to nature, which is in opposition to the western tradition and which anticipates such ecocritical labels as “slow violence” (Rob Nixon), “environmental generational amnesia” (Peter Kahn Jr.) and “the dignification of the overlooked” (Lawrence Buell). In an attempt to examine this alternative approach with a specific focus on the role of animals in Lawrence’s writing, the paper will pay particular attention to the poem “Snake” and the novella The Fox

The Dream of the North

Northern Europe and North America have dominated the world stage for more than two centuries. Using a wide range of sources, this book provides the first coherent account from a multi-national perspective of the ideas and perceptions that, from the Renaissance onwards, fuelled the North’s rise to prominence, and enabled it to rival the traditional cultural and political hegemony of the South. This includes not only the fascinating conquest of the polar regions, but also the religious upheaval of the Reformation, the changing view of nature engendered by Romanticism, and, not least, the revival of ancient Nordic and Celtic culture. Finally, the book offers an indispensable historical background to current events in the Far North, where the past and the future meet in a complex web of dramatic environmental concerns, the exploitation of natural resources, and the strategies of politics and commerce

The Transgressive Narratives of Hamsun's In Wonderland

Artikkelen fokuserer på de grenseoverskridende særtrekkene ved Hamsuns I Æventyrland, dvs. på bokens varierte bruk av litterære sjangre og narrative teknikker, og på fortellerens like grenseoverskridende fremstilling av seg selv. For å undersøke disse særtrekkene mer spesifikt, diskuterer artikkelen i hvilken grad Hamsuns reisebeskrivelse er påvirket av romanen som ifølge Martin Nag var avgjørende for Hamsun reise til Kaukasus, nemlig Mikhail Lermontovs Vår tids helt (1840). Dette vil bl.a. innebære en undersøkelse av genrelikheter så vel som likheter mellom Lermontovs hovedskikkelse Petsjorin og fortelleren i I Æventyrland, som begge blir diskutert i forhold til den russiske tradisjonen for det såkalte «overflødige menneske»