Litteraturrecensionen som bildningsmedel i en borgerlig kvinnotidskrift

Abstract

This essay explores literary criticism as a means of liberal education or cultivation – Bildung; bildning in Swedish – in the bourgeois women's periodical Idun during the second half of the 1940s. During the 1940s, popular education, folkbildning, gained wide ground in Sweden, a project that was largely the men's domain. What this essay explores, female bourgeois Bildung, is considered with this in mind as a counter-voice in the Bildung-aspirations of the 1940s. The essay examines how attempts have been made to achieve female bourgeois Bildung in practice. The material chosen for the study is literary reviews which has to do with the fact that the literary review is considered as a means to achieve Bildung in practice. More precisely, literary reviews written by Eva Wennerström-Hartmann in the bourgeois women's periodical Idun between 1945 and 1949, are being studied. The study tries to answer the question: In what ways do the literary reviews in Idun function as a means of Bildung? In the essay, a close reading of the reviews is done, the reviews are also placed in a context of literary criticism and in a context of history of Bildung. Ellen Key's understanding of Bildung is being used to make visible in what ways the literary reviews function as means of Bildung. The results shows that the literary reviews function as a means of Bildung by engaging with contemporary issues and by showing the reader how she can understand her contemporaries and herself through literature. Additionally, the result shows that the literary reviews function as means of Bildung by preaching morality, cultivate the reader's sense of beauty, and by relating the reviewed book to contemporary literature and to a literary tradition.