In My Flowering Garden: Nordic picture books in the era of student occupation 1968

The aim of my presentation is to examine the concept of gardening as a cultural construct, and how this concept is created and transformed in picture books from 1968 (the canonical year of student revolt). We often think of the 1970s as the decade when Nordic children’s literature became political. But such a judgment may be premature. An analysis might show that this claim only offers a schematic image of the 1970s as the period dismissing fairy tales, idyllic representations, and fantasy stories because they were too ”conservative and by extension obscured capitalistic power relations in society” (Widhe 1). Dwelling, place, and garden arealso a recurring theme in these tumultuous times. I am particularly interested in how Garden (as in a cultivated landscape) works as a rhetorical topoi.In rhetoric, topos refers to a method for developing arguments.Topoi could be analysed through Kenneth Burke’s explication of cluster analysis (for finding topoi in texts and pictures), which he identifies as a qualitative method designed to analyse rhetorical discourse. What I want to show through is thatthe concept of the pastoral garden is set out with much more complex and ambivalent features than usually taken forgranted. A garden can be infused with the essence of dwelling, emulatinga home. But it can also be a threat representing world detachment and confinement.