Anxiety in Modern Scandinavian Literature: August Strindberg, Inger Christensen, Karl Ove Knausgård

This book explores how states and traits of anxiety are reflected in the style and structure of certain works of modern Scandinavian literature. I argue that literature illuminates the cultural plasticity and ambiguity of anxiety as a theoretical construct. I suggest that a diachronic approach to literary studies of anxiety may enrich our understanding of anxiety in contemporary research. The literature analyzed in this book provides an avenue through which we can investigate the complex dynamics of anxiety to differentiate conceptual frameworks that reduce anxiety to a biomedical concept or high-cost mental health problem. This book contributes to cultural and literary scholarship that contests the subjugation of anxiety to a scientific world view and aims to expose the imaginative and creative dimensions of anxiety that are often ignored in contemporary public discourse and policy.

Markus Floris Christensen, Europa-Universität Flensburg/Copenhagen, Denmark.