The project aims to analyze the significance of Protestantism for the aesthetics of Nordic cultures. The Reformation was established and institutionalized in the Nordic countries statewide and enduringly within a few decades as the state church either until now or until very recently. The fundamental thesis is that it was not only one of the most important political factors in the political, social and ecclesiastical history of Scandinavia, but that it has also had a deep impact on cultural life in all its forms until today: on literature, visual arts, music, on both high and popular culture, on cultural practices and performances. The repercussions concern content (presence of Christian inter-texts) and form: We might detect a predilection for simplicity, logocentrism, purism, worldliness as obligation, tension between individualism and collectivism and in consequence a tendency to prefer aesthetic forms as subjective poetry, autobiography and engaged literature. Protestantism as a common denominator of Nordic cultures calls attention to the significant common ground of different characteristics and developments, on special features compared with other cultural areas and on the tension-filled dynamics of Nordic cultures on the background of other transnational developments.
Project led by: Thomas Mohnike, Université de Strasbourg, Lena Rohrbach, Universität Basel and Joachim Grage, Universität Freiburg
Funded by EUCOR-Seed-Money (April 2018 to March 2019)
Event: International Conference – Strasbourg, November 15-16, 2018
Programme en pdf : Workshop program 04
Program
Thursday November 15th 2018
9h00Welcome
Joachim Grage, Lena Rohrbach, Thomas Mohnike
9h30Ueli Zahnd (Basel): Which Protestants? Crypto-Calvinism in Scandinavia
10h15Margrét Eggertsdóttir (Reykjavik): The Value and Importance of Poetry in the Vernacular
11hCoffee break
11h30Jürg Glauser (Basel/Zürich): The Aesthetics of Protestant Rhetoric
12h15Arne Bugge Amundsen (Oslo): Simplicity and Logocentrism? 18th and 19th century Church architecture in Scandinavia
13hLunch
14h30Bernd Roling (Berlin): ‚Rugia Gothorum’: Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten and the Tradition of Gothicism
15h15Frédérique Harry (Paris): Bible and literature: literary secularization and contemporary rewritings
16hCoffee break
16h30Joachim Grage, Lena Rohrbach, Thomas Mohnike: Presentation of intended project
20hConference dinner
Friday November 16th 2018
9hAnna Bohlin (Bergen): Nineteenth-Century Nationalism of Calling: Anti-Catholicism in Bremer and Topelius
9h45Claudia Lindén (Stockholm): Politics, Religion and Literary Aesthetics in Nordic 19th Century Women’s Movement
10h30Coffee break
11hPiero Colla (Paris/Bruxelles): “Do you talk about God in this Nursery School?” – Rhetoric and Experience of the Sacred in the reform of the Swedish Nursery School
11h45Sophie Wennerscheid (Ghent): The I and the Evil. Variations on the Figure of the Antichrist in Danish Literature, Opera and Film
12h30Lunch
14hGiuliano D’Amico (Oslo): “Rather than Buddha’s calm, I choose the Crucifixion” – Håkan Sandell’s Christian palimpsests
14h45Joachim Schiedermair (Greifswald): The Absent Father. Remnants of a Protestant Past in Lene Ask’s Graphic Novels
15h30Discussion
Practical Information
Venue: MISHA – Strasbourg, 5, allée du Général Rouvillois, salle Europe
Participation is free; please register before November 5th by writing to Valentine Royaux: valentine.royaux@hotmail.fr
