Reading is not an innocent activity. On literary techniques, readers and reading according to three contemporary Swedish poets.

This Master’s thesis explores three contemporary Swedish poets’ – Lars Mikael Raattamaa, Anna Hallberg and Johan Jönson – understanding of their work as a political activity. By using Jonathan Culler’s theory on literary competence and literary conventions as a theoretical tool for an idea analysis, the three poets' arguments for or against certain literary techniques, and their ideas about readers and reading, are explored and discussed. In what ways are established literary methods questioned by the three poets? In what ways are established theories on readers and reading questioned? In what way can their poetic work be regarded as political? As a background, the debate about poetry in Swedish newspapers and literary magazines is presented, as well as the common focus on readers and reading in social sciences and in humanities and arts. The trend is to interpret the reader as active and creative. Following this trend, and surpassing it, the three Swedish poets challenges established literary techniques and established theories on readers and reading. The ideas of the three poets can be summarized as follows: The poet must be very conscious about different literary techniques and their effects. Poetry and literature must not be written in ways that is hierarchic or undemocratic. That is: literary competence is actually not important. The meaning of the poem or the text is in the mind of the reader, not in the mind of the poet or the writer. The poets aim and goal must be to write a kind of poetry that is accessible to all people, unregarded literary competence or such things as literary conventions.Uppsatsnivå: