The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the portrayals of class in four Swedish contemporary novels that have been mentioned as working class literature in the literary public sphere. During the 20th century, society has undergone vast changes due to globalization and technology development. The rise in standards of living for most people in the Western societies has led to changed consumption patterns. In consequence, there has been increased emphasis given to cultural rather than materialist explanations of social stratification.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how generational identities are conveyed in the reception of two debut novels, Jack by Ulf Lundell and Allt by Martina Lowden. Both novels have been considered literary and social expressions of their generations. The empirical material consists of 14 reviews in Swedish daily press from the time of publication of Jack and Allt, respectively. The thesis revolves around the following questions: How is the generational identity defined in terms of lifestyle practices, milieus and other social circumstances? To what extent are structured factors such as gender and class considered? How are the critics considering the reflexive project of the self? I base the theoretical framework on Anthony Giddens' theories about identity creation in the late modern society.

 AbstractThe main purpose of the essay is to describe the reception of Alexander Solzhenitsyn?s debut novel One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) in Swedish newspapers. The reception itself comprises the 1963?s Swedish reviewers opinions on the novel as to how it was controversial or not and the literary quality of the novel and Solzhenitsyn?s writing. In the analysis, seventeen reviews from seventeen different newspapers is included, studied and compared.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the handling and shelving of graphic novels and adult-comics in Swedish public libraries, in order to find out if this type of literature is prioritized in the same way as other forms of literature. The study was conducted by photographing the Hci/uHci shelves at ten different public libraries to give an objective view of the shelving to later be analysed and compared. Inquiry sheets were sent to the photographed libraries in order to get the librarians view of their own comic book shelves and collections. We found that the state of the comic-shelves differed from library to library according to how interested and committed the librarians were. New research areas in the field of Library and Information Science are discussed and questions are raised about the future of graphic novels and adult-comic-books in libraries, about their place in the libraries and about how librarians and the users knowledge of this media can be improved..

This essay is about the female characters in the books of Hemingway. Are they as simple as some critics say, or are they more complex beings, and which ones of the women in the life of Hemingway, can be noticed in his female characters? In the work with this essay, biographies of Hemingway as well as a few of his novels have been studied. The selected novels are Farewell to Arms, Across the River and into the Trees, The Sun also rises and the short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The selection was based on the fact that these stories contain good female characters.

The aim of the study was to understand professionals? perceptions and experiences of adolescent stress. In the study I interested myself further if you can identify gender-specific patterns in the professional stories about young people's stress and stress related illness. Five interviews were conducted with professionals in psychiatry and social work. The thesis took its incipience in social constructionism.

This study focuses on romantic friendship between women in three Swedish novels written between 1836 and 1857: Sophie von Knorring?s (1797?1848) Illusionerna (1836), Fredrika Bremer?s (1801?1865) En dagbok (1843) and Marie Sophie Schwartz? (1819?1894) En fåfäng mans hustru (1857). Also, the connection between women and passion as well as the interesting occurrence of step- and foster mothers is looked upon in the study.The romantic friendship is freely expressed in these novels; love between women is neither presented as unnatural or unchaste. It both challenges the heterosexual matrix? claim on intelligibility and its rules for how desire should be expressed.

The current paper is a study of the character Christian Grey in the EL James trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey. The main aim is to find out how masculinity, sexuality and gender are constructed in this erotic fantasy. More over terms as femininity, unmanliness and gender have relevance to the study. Several studies have been done on romance novels and Harlequin in particular from a gender perspective, but few of them from a masculine point of view. Hence, no earlier study has been done on Fifty Shades of Grey with masculinity studies as the main tool of masculinity, or with theories of romance.

Serial killers are present in most Media today: TV-shows, books, magazines, news shows and music. Research about them has been made in many fields, such as criminology, psychology and psychiatry. There is also research about the serial killer as a cultural being. In my paper I have looked into the serial killer in fiction. I have chosen to compare two novels that deal with the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The purpose of this text is to show how the mother motif is portrayed in four selected novels by Alfred Kämpe, but the thesis also serves the purpose of emphasizing the fact that the mother motif can be seen interacting with the class motif.This text will account for a new insight into the motifs in Alfred Kämpe?s Trälar. Known as one of the first authors to write in the genre of working-class literature in Sweden Kämpe?s texts provide motifs common for this genre such as class, identity and solidarity. As this thesis shows there is yet another motif that should be included among these typical Swedish working class literature motifs: the mother motive.

This study analyses two non-western novels used in the subject of Swedish in upper secondary school: Fatou Diomes The Belly of the Atlantic and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies Half a Yellow Sun. Looking at how the books female main character relate to Stuart Halls theory of cultural identity, I come to the conclusion that they somewhat differently relate to an essential ?authentic? self. Salie talks explicit about a generic African soul that she possesses. Olanna never talks about anything ?authentic?, but her narrative and contrary subject positions can be read as a way of demasking her European ?white? self in favour of a truer Igbo self.

Jane AustenHer dialogues and the time in which she lived This essay is about the dialogues in Jane Austen?s novels and what they say about the time she lived in. The interest for Austen comes from the ?Austen movies? I?ve seen the latest year. AIM AND FRAMING OF QUESTIONS My aim has been to compare the contents in the dialogues with the fact in the biographies. The questions are:What do the dialogues say about the convention, the behaviour, manners and the form of address? What does it say about young men and women and about the marriage? Are the dialogues supported by the content in the biographies? Did Jane Austen really write realistic? METHOD AND MATERIAL The method was to read the novels and then the biographies.

The objective with this essay was to compare the modern epistolary novel Priority by danish author Iselin C. Hermann with the epistolary genre during its heyday in late seventeenth to early nineteenth century. I especially looked at gender: the similarities and differences between the female character in Priority and the female characters during the epistolary novels days of glory. I concluded that Priority has the same structure, characteristics as the heyday epistolary novel and that the female character does not have any typical similarities with its stereotypical female characters. In addition I also came to the conclusion that she is reminiscent to their original model Héloïse and follows the epistolary novels heyday convention when she dies at the end of the novel..

The purpose of this study is to analyze how homosexuality is portrayed in young- adult novels. I use books published in Sweden from 1977- 2003. Three of the books have female main characters and the other three have male main characters. My purpose is therefore to compare the different results between the sexes.I will examine and discuss the homosexuality in the novels with focus on the homosexual identity of the young characters and how it is formed. I relate the results to a queer discussion about identity.

The aim of this study is to examine marriage as something both desirable and normal in three popular novels from the 1860s about marriage: Rosa Carlén?s Agnes Tell: en äktenskapshistoria (1860), Marie Sophie Schwartz?s Alma eller De moderna äktenskapen (1860) and Sara Pfeiffer?s Aurora Trampe (1867). Using a theoretical perspective from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, I have analysed the novels as being producers of, and resistance against, norms.The good marriage is partly depicted as a utopian vision in the novels, which therefore functions as fantasies for the readers. But it is also depicted as a realistic possibility. Though difficult to achieve, the main characters reach the goal through individual improvement towards correct behaviour.The question for the main characters is not whether they are going to marry or not, but how to make their marriages good ones.