Kaj Munk’s “De Faldne” – Memorial Poem and Monument Inscription

On 29 August 1943, the Danish government resigned. The German Wehrmacht was to take immediate control of the Danish Army and Navy. Under widespread fighting against this “takeover,” 23 Danish soldiers and two civilians were killed, and a further 53 were wounded. Munk promptly wrote the poem “De Faldne” in memory of the soldiers killed in the assault on the Danish Army and Navy. In Munk’s wartime oeuvre, some dramas, poems and memoir work, implying a subtle, indirect appeal to resistance, have proved to be viable. His “direct” resistance poetry appears to be more time-bound. “De Faldne,” however, is a special case. It is one of his best “direct,” activist poems. As an inscription on memorials, it is sometimes referred to in ceremonial speeches, but it has remained untreated in the few serious recent readings of Munk’s resistance literature. It is therefore an aim of the present article to fill in a gap. When Munk wrote this memorial poem, he had already – through the open, resolute will to confront the occupiers which he had advocated at every possible occasion after 9 April 1940 – achieved a unique status as a national resistance icon. This status was further cemented when he himself joined the ranks of “De Faldne.” During the night of 4 January 1944, he was arrested and killed. His funeral became a national event, and the brutal murder indeed strengthened rather than weakened the will to resistance. “De Faldne” began to exert a strong and lasting influence on the construction of the collective memory of World War II and the Occupation when, after the Liberation, the first stanza was carved as an inscription in two places at the central memorial site for those killed in the freedom struggle, Mindelunden in Ryvangen. This first stanza was moreover used on a considerable number of memorial stones erected on local initiative throughout the country. The present article offers an analysis of its important role in the memory culture of the Occupation, both through its concrete presence on numerous monuments and as part of a wider memorial culture with ceremonial anniversaries and commemoration days like 9 April (the Occupation, 1940), 4–5 May (the Liberation, 1945), and 29 August (the end of the politics of cooperation, 1943). This commemorative culture has retained its public appeal, perhaps even growing more important in recent years due to the shift toward a more activist Danish foreign policy since the 1990s. Quite recently, several of the monuments with Munk’s words as an inscription have been revitalised and enhanced by musical and visual dimensions transmitted by new, digital forms of communication. Through the modification of this cultural heritage, Munk’s words, as well as his fate, have become audible and visible in new ways

System and Culture in Format Adaptation

This article explores strengths and weaknesses of common methods and frameworks in studying format adaptation, primarily in television series, but with some findings applicable for television entertainment formats as well. The article problematises how work on transnational remakes of television series as well as studies of format adaptation in general predominately focuses on either using text-based readings of cultural similarities and differences or explanations rooted in the media system such as, for example, a new channel’s profile or norms and traditions in the programming interface of a particular channel or country. The article examines the dominant literature and theories on the subject, illustrating that there is an ongoing debate among researchers as to which framework is more powerful and precise in accounting for format adaptation. It becomes apparent that studies favouring the one approach greatly over the other are often comparing apples and oranges. Finally, the article aims to show how existing research most often compares original and remake in their final forms, overlooking the creation process, the dilemmas of the creatives behind the transformations, and the effect their preconceptions have on the finished results

Arbejderkultur i Danmark i perioden fra 1890 til 1924

Arbejderkultur i Danmark i perioden fra 1890 til 192

Bachtin, autor-iteten og modernismen

Bachtin-receptio

The Family Saga as a Bestseller Strategy

In the post-millennial years, Danish literature has witnessed a veritable wave of biographically based, regionally rooted family sagas. One important factor of this surge is a reaction against a polarization in the Danish literature of the 1990s between, on one hand, a minimalist, experimental short-story prose, critically acclaimed, but marginalized by the reading public, and on the other hand, widely read biographies and autobiographies of publicly known figures, mostly written by journalists. Examining lists of especially significant literary prizes and by way of a qualitative inquiry, the article claims that one determinant in the recent development of the Danish novel has been a biographically oriented bestseller strategy, aiming at a fusion of literary quality and a broad appeal to the readers. Based on recent bestseller theories the article defends the notion that certain genres or genre fields can be pertinent in the historical assessment of bestsellerism, and that a historically changing relation exists between popular bestsellers and ‘literary’ literature. Finally, the article advocates the idea of a ‘bestseller determinant’ in literary history and sociology – as a pull determinant complementing the push determinant in the theories of ‘deautomatization’ of Russian Formalism (Sklovskij, Tynjanov), New Criticism and other theories connected to Modernism

Duplik

Dupli