Searching for a new national identity. The construction of Swedish cultural memory in Carl Snoilsky’s poems "Svenska bilder” (1881–1897)

The primary goal of the project is to analyse the construction of Swedish cultural memory and its limitations in a monumental series of poems by Carl Snoilsky, Svenska bilder (1881–1897).
We intend to analyse the issue from several theoretical perspectives, relevant to our material. Apart from a general theory of cultural memory (Assmann, Crane, Confino, Siegmund, Oexle, Kany), the project will make use of a range of more specialised research tools with a high degree of applicability, such as archetypes of national mythology, strategies of historical narrativisation, the creation of the Other, including a concept of Poland/Polish identity, mechanisms of the implied reader, gender stereotypisation and ecological aspects.
A secondary goal is to use the obtained research results in a critical reflection on the very theory of cultural memory. One of the generally accepted assumptions of this theory is the notion of three main forms of cultural memory: pre-modern, modern and postmodern. Even a preliminary analysis of our subject of research shows that the series written by Snoilsky cannot be easily labelled using these categories. Memory presented in Svenska bilder definitely has pre-modern characteristics, but at the same time it is trying to modernise them in all the fields chosen by us. The contemporary reception of this series, which has almost been forgotten, is the best possible proof that no form of modern memory crystallised as a result of this modernisation. Instead, it created a hybrid, which from today’s point of view is a dead end in the historical transformation of collective remembering in Sweden. We hope that a description of this form will cast new light also on the cultural memory of the “folkhemmet”, which has its “historical reasons” (Hegel).

Projektet undersöker konstruktionen av kulturminne i Carl Snoilskys diktsvit "Svenska bilder" (1881-97). Projektet har initierats av och utförs i samarbete med skandinavister vid Uniwersytet Jagiellonski i Kraków.