Modernitet och intermedialitet i Erik Asklunds tidiga romankonst

Modernitet och intermedialitet is the first major study of the Swedish modernist writer Erik Asklund (1908-1980) and his works. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three close readings of Asklund’s early novels Kvinnan är stor (The Woman is Great, 1931), Lilla land (A Small Country, 1933), and Fanfar med fem trumpeter (A Fanfare with Five Trumpets, 1934). In these novels, Asklund depicts modernity in Sweden in the 1930’s. Exploring the modernity of the 1930’s in Asklund’s novels, especially the contemporary media situation turns out to be one of the most important aspects. Asklund wrote stories about film, music and various forms of visual culture, (photography, for instance). These different forms of art and media play an important role for Asklund’s writings, not only thematically, but also narationally. In my analyses, I put forward different theoretical aspects of intermediality. In this context, the ideas of Werner Wolf have been especially useful to my examinations of the intermedial aspects in Asklund’s works. In the novel Kvinnan är stor, Asklund tells the story about the young woman Lydia, who moves from the countryside to the big city of Stockholm. She then learns to decode the modern urban society, and becomes a modern woman. In Kvinnan är stor, intermediality is expressed mainly through various connections to film and photography. The modernization of Sweden in the early 20th century was much a question of the countryside becoming modern. In Lilla land, Asklund depicts this process. The novel is one of the first works ever focusing the forming of the Swedish welfare state project. The story is told in a cinematic or filmical way. The third novel to be analysed in the thesis is Fanfar med fem trumpeter. This is one of the first Swedish jazz novels. Asklund tells the story about five young unemployed men in Stockholm who form a jazz orchestra, and make a career. The novels characters experience everyday life as “medialized”; they compare reality with music, film, and photography. These novels, as well as all Asklund’s writings from the 1930’s, are important contributions to the “story about Sweden becoming a modern country”. This “story” consists of the novels, short stories and poems written in the early decades of the 20th century in Sweden