Litteraturhistorieämnets vad, hur och varför : Gymnasielärares attityder gentemot litteraturhistorieämnet

This thesis seeks to examine the subject of literary history in swedish upper secondary school, that is for students between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. The background of the choice of subject is that it in relation to its place in curriculum and in comparansion concerning reasearch about students reading and other question about literature, there is shortage of reaserach. The investigation is based on hypothesis that the teacher attitude towards the subject of literary history affects the teaching in greater extent than in other part of the swedish subject. To examine the teachers’, on the one hand, underlying ideas of the purpose of the literary history subject and on the other hand the teachers’ didactic view of how they design the teaching the attituted were divided into two subcategories, idealistic attitudes and realistic attitudes. The former represent teachers idea of the subject of literary history and the latter represent teachers attitude towards the subject in its teaching. The investigation was done by partially examining literary definitions and governing documents, but first and foremost by survey and interviews. Through the literature review the conlusion is drawn that the subject of literary history is challenged by aspects linked to the lack of a establiched methods of writing the history of literature and the question of its content. The empiric result shows that the dominant idealistic attitude towards the subject of literary history as important because it promotes students’ understanding of history in more general terms. By teaching literary history, the teachers want to bring out the likeness between the students’ present with the text’s past. Overall the opinion of participating teachers is that there should be more room for literary history in the subject of swedish. The result also shows a tendency that teachers who only organize their teaching chronologically feel that they have less opportunity to teach in the way they want to. This in comparasion to teachers who organize their teaching both chronologically and thematically, who to a greater extent feel satisfied. Based on the result the thesis in the end discusses the importance of further reaserach on the subject aswell as oppurtunities that a more established theoretical language could bring to the subject of literary history