Kvinnor i litteraturhistorien
en undersökning av hur kvinnors skrivande och deras litterära verk beskrivs och värderas i litterära översiktsverk för gymnasieskolan
The purpose of this masters thesis is to examine outlines of literary history for students at upper secondary school from a gender studies perspective. Earlier theoretical work concerning outlines of literary history is sparse. There are three dissertations, but none with an explicit gender perspective. The theoretical approach comes mainly from theories in literary historiography and gender research. Also discussed are the following concepts: canon, literary field and literary valuation. This part of the thesis is based on literature studies. The objects of investigation are the three books which according to a mail inquiry are the most used at the Swedish upper secondary school today: Litteraturorientering 1977, Svenska timmar 1991 rev. 1999 and Dikten och vi 1987. The methodology includes both a qualitative perusal of the outlines and a quantitative examination to show how much space female authors get. Important for the qualitative analyses are the two concepts deriving from gender studies: dichotomy and hierarchy. The conclusion of this study is that although firmly stated in the official documents concerning education at the upper secondary school that equality between sexes shall be stimulated and encouraged, the outlines of literary history for students at upper secondary school show a troublesome distortion. Female authors get much lesser space and tokens of dichotomy and hierarchy are frequent in the material. To change this, women must conquer positions in the literary studies and in the literary field. Then women will get their legitimate place in the history of literature.