Contemporary Scandinavian literature
St Petersburg University and its Representative Office in Barcelona invite you to the online lecture "Contemporary Scandinavian literature". It will focus on the works of such writers as Erlend Loe, Selma Lagerlöf, Horace Engdahl and others. The lecture will be delivered by Nina Shcherbak, Candidate of Philology.
Scandinavian literature, like any national literature, has its own tradition. The story of the Vikings and their conquests to some extent sets the character of the prose, which is defined by mythology and sometimes very strict in its canons. The traditional saga is rooted in the past, creating archetypes and symbols. Scandinavian literature is notable for its multifaceted descriptions of the lives and cultures of its peoples, as well as their histories and traditions. Contemporary Scandinavian literature continues the themes of its predecessors. However, at the same time, it is characterised by new approaches. It is also known for its colourful and original characters that sometimes challenge the stereotypes and expectations of readers.
The Story of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf, the author of the world-famous and much-loved The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, laid the foundations for the trend of ‘magic realism’. The film of the same name, based on the novel, was the brilliant start of the acting career of the incomparable Greta Garbo.
The screenwriter and author Erlend Loe, who uses the principle of the film narrative as a special way of organising narrative, many of you know from his cult novel Naïve. Super, which became a bestseller in 15 countries. The author has a compressed, masculine writing style, so unlike the usual romance.
Horace Engdahl is a writer, professor and historian of Scandinavian literature. In his short story The Man on the Bridge from his collection Den sista grisen (The Last Pig), he demonstrates not so much the desperation of men in modern society, but the author’s ability to accept the existence of the most ordinary and unsympathetic man and give him the right to exist in this world.
Lecturer
Nina Shcherbak is Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at St Petersburg University, Master of Arts (the United Kingdom), a writer and screenwriter. She is also a scriptwriter for science television shows, author of fifteen monographs, and books on linguistics, literature, language philosophy, and English literature.
The lecture will be held as part of the events to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia. The lecture will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.