Lynn R. Wilkinson

Fredag (Friday), 10:05–10:35, H135a

Affiliering (affiliation): University of Texas at Austin 

Abstract

“The Darwinian Seascapes of Anne Charlotte Leffler and August Strindberg”

Leffler’s novella, “Aurore Bunge” (1883), and Strindberg’s I havsbandet both feature world-weary aristocrats who travel to the Stockholm archipelago, where they encounter an impressive array of natural species on land and in the liquid world of the sea. The encounters prompt them to reconsider their relationship to the natural and social worlds, a universal struggle for life, and natural selection. In both narratives, boats, lighthouses, and islands suggest the limited role of consciousness and reason in making sense of the world. There is no Archimedean perspective for either protagonist, who come to see, if unwillingly, their own roles as participants, rather than mere observers, of the natural world. For both Aurore Bunge and Axel Borg, the encounter with nature and the sea is profoundly erotic, calling into question their status as individuals in control of their fate and as members of a privileged class that is profoundly, even morbidly, out of sync with nature.

In Darwin’s Plots, Gillian Beer argues that the plots of novels by George Eliot and Thomas Hardy echo the patterns of Darwin’s scientific writings, particularly the focus on evolution and natural selection. “Aurore Bunge” and I havsbandet respond to Darwin’s works in similar ways. They find their place among other works in the literature of the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough that hark back to Darwin, most notably those of Jens Peter Jacobsen

Om (about): 

Lynn R. Wilkinson is Professor of Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching focus on European literature and culture of the long nineteenth century. She has published The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg and French Literary Culture, Anne Charlotte Leffler and Modernist Drama: True Women and New Women on the Fin-de-siècle Scandinavian Stage, and Laughter and Civility: The Theater of Emma Gad.