Imot institusjonen. En analyse av Amalie Skrams Professor Hieronimus og På Sct. Jørgen (1895) og Knut Hamsuns Paa gjengrodde Stier (1949)

Abstract

This dissertation is an analysis of three (semi-)autobiographical literary works: Amalie Skram’s novels Professor Hieronimus and På Sct. Jørgen (1895) and Knut Hamsun’s memoir Paa gjengrodde Stier (1949). The analysis emphasizes the works’ portrayal of the institution. I examine how the institutional space, created for observation of the institutionalized individual, is portrayed when this observational relationship is reversed: The institution is experienced through living, writing subjects who involuntarily spend time in the institutional space. In exploring how the institutional setting enables, shapes, and challenges the protagonists’ projects, I discuss which narrative strategies are put into play both to portray the institution and to criticize it. These themes are exposed through theoretical perspectives from interdisciplinary fields such as literature and medicine and law and literature, as well as spatial theory and philosophy, institutional/psychiatric history, and fictionality theory. The dissertation finds that in these vastly different works of literature, Amalie Skram and Knut Hamsun expand the understanding of the institutional space by processing their institutional experiences through the lens of creative writing. These portrayals function both as critiques of various institutional practices of their respective times and as negotiations with the reader regarding the space the authors are granted, as well as their legacy. In this, the works encapsulate aspects of the institutional experience which transcends the language accessible to health professionals