The Ups and Downs of Literary Value: Case studies of Swedish and American literature 1900–1970

What increases and decreases literary value? Some authorships survive, but what happens to the others? This project contributes new perspectives on 20th-century literary history through case studies of literary valuation in two national contexts with a focus on the fluctuating and generally fading literary value of a number of Swedish and American authorships 1900-1970: Marika Stiernstedt, Sigfrid Siwertz, Emilia Fogelklou, Gustaf Hellström, Zona Gale, Julia Peterkin, Ellen Glasgow, and Marjorie Rawlings.

The shifting valuation of these authorships is discussed in terms of Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s idea of change or contingency as the only constancy of literary value, Raymond Williams’ concepts of dominant, residual, and emergent culture, and specific Swedish and American applications of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories. The project also engages categories of literary value from previous Swedish research and applies them to a geographically and historically more extensive material. The Swedish material and the American material not only shed light on each national context separately, but also resonate with each other. When we pursue aspects of cultural specificity in a very large and a very small national literature and compare them, we do so based on insights from the research field of world literature regarding interplay between literatures and literary discourses and what transcends national boundaries in terms of culture and value.