%0 Journal Article
%T Irritation, Impudence, Insight: A Critical Reading of Knut Hamsun's P turn¨¦
%A Micha£¿ Kruszelnicki
%J Nordlit : Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur
%D 2010
%I Universitetet i Troms?
%X The article brings the critical reading of Knut Hamsun¡¯s P turn¨¦ ¨C the collection of Hamsun¡¯s three polemic lectures entitled: ¡°Norsk litteratur¡±, ¡°Psykologisk litteratur¡± and ¡°Modelitteratur¡±. These texts make up Hamsun¡¯s theoretical and literary manifesto (1891), which up to the present has remained an important introduction to his early and most acclaimed work. In two first sections of the text I follow Hamsun¡¯s scornful arguments against Norwegian realistic literature (as represented mainly by ¡°the great four¡± writers: Bj rnson, Ibsen, Lie and Kielland) in an attempt to concisely present Hamsun¡¯s reformatory plan according to which Norwegian literature should be freed from its entanglement in didacticism and social bias and redirected onto a path of a deeper psychology. The final part of the article presents a critical assessment of Hamsun¡¯s endeavor. I believe some of Hamsun¡¯s opinions in the matter of literature are still up-to-date and thoughtprovoking. These insights, however, have to be separated from Hamsun¡¯s hasty generalizations concerning the work of Bj rnson, Lie, Kielland, and Ibsen which I defend against Hamsun¡¯s malicious argumentation. In the final part of the paper P turn¨¦ is assessed with regard to the ways of how Hamsun¡¯s oeuvre has evolved in time. This approach enables one to grasp some of P turn¨¦ paradoxes, e.g.: the discrepancy between Hamsun¡¯s early literary stance (neo-romanticism and militant, anti-bourgeois views) and the shape his work assumed later on (didacticism, the tendency to morally judge his heroes, support for the vulgar ideology of fascism, etc.).
%K Knut Hamsun
%K P turn¨¦
%K critique
%K Norwegian literature
%K ¡°the great four¡±
%K realism
%K psychology
%U http://james.ub.uit.no/baser/septentrio/index.php/nordlit/article/view/1050