The Body of Poetry: Materiality, Mediality and critique of the subject in Swedish Modernist Poetry

My research project ”The body of poetry: materiality, mediality and critique of the subject in Swedish feminist poetry in the 20th century” is centered around the relationship between materialised subjectivity and poetic form in Swedish modernist and contemporary poetry published in the 20th century. Edith Södergran, Elsa Grave, Sonja Åkesson and Aase Berg make up my primary material, as these poets deal with the issues I’m interested in in different but partly overlapping ways. This topic and material is chosen with the aim to show in what ways the poetry negotiates the relations between the body, the subject and identity. The project explores what possibilities and limits the poetic medium possesses in the framing of these topics. These poets all have prominent places in the lyrical literary history in Sweden; Likewise, bodily motives and the materiality of language are debated in their poetry in diverse ways. Despite this, no thorough study of the relations between the body, poetic form and critique of the subject as they develop during the 20th century has been made. Therefore, the aim of my project is to illuminate how poetic materiality – understood as the conjunction between bodily motives and poetic form – can be discussed and understood in the primary material, and in relation to the positions of the poets on the Swedish poetic field and its developments during the chosen time period.