Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson, Synnøve Solbakken

Kathy Rees (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.3.5: Norwegian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Kjerstin Moody (Gustavus Adolphus College), Sven Hakon Rossel (Universitat Wien), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (University College London), Anja Tröger (University of Edinburgh)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1857

Places

Norway (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novella

Resources

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This is the first of Bjørnson’s many “bonde-novellen”, a coming-of-age story set within a peasant culture. The peasant tales of Steen Blicher (Danish), Berthold Auerbach (German), and Jeremias Gotthelf (Swiss) were already very popular, but Bjørnson’s work marked a radical break with traditional forms by his infusion of the saga spirit. Theodore Jorgenson described it as “an epoch-making work in Norwegian literature . . . prophetic of the rise of the novel” (278). Since boyhood, Bjørnson had believed that the characters of the sagas lived again among the

bonde

, and he sought “to elevate our history through its greatest and most characteristically Norwegian men, and to draw pictures of our daily life” (

Gro-Tid

, 20 May, 1861, p.246). His stark expression of human…

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1228 words

Citation: Rees, Kathy. "Synnøve Solbakken". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 August 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38780, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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