Overview

Freedom of the printed word is a defining feature of the modern world. Yet censorship and the suppression of literature never cease, and remain topical issues even in the most liberal of democracies. Today, just as in the past, advances in media technology are followed by new regulatory mechanisms. Similarly, any attempt to control cultural expression inevitably spurs fresh discussions about freedom of speech. In Forbidden Literature scholars from a variety of disciplines address censorships past and present, whether in liberal democracies or totalitarian regimes. Through in-depth case studies they trace a historical continuum in which literature reveals its two-sided nature: it demands both regulation and protection. The contributors investigate the logic of literary repression, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and analyse why it is thought essential to control literature. Moreover, the authors determine how literary practices are shaped and transformed by regulation and censorship.

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Erik Erlanson, PhD, researcher and Senior Lecturer at the Department for Film and Literature, Linnaeus University. In his thesis, he investigated the arts of existence developed by a number of 20th century American, French and Scandinavian poets. Presently he is working with a project investigating the function of literature in the Swedish welfare state apparatus and on the relationship between economics, technology, and aesthetics. He is also editor of the Swedish journal Subaltern and translator of works by, among others, Pierre Klossowski, Max Loreau, and Luce Irigaray. Jon Helgason, PhD and Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Lecturer in Icelandic at Linnaeus University. His most recent works include two co-authored monographs (2015, 2017) on literary value and value regimes in the contemporary literary and cultural sphere in Sweden, as well as two co-edited research anthologies on bestseller phenomena (2014) and performativity and performance theory (2016), respectively. Helgason is former chairman of the Swedish Art Councils Literature Committee (20162019). Peter Henning, PhD and Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Umeå University. His thesis (2015) dealt with memory and writing in 19th century Sweden. As a postdoc, he has researched the tension between materiality and aesthetics in European Romanticism with special regard to the work of John Keats. Currently, he studies the function of art and literature in the Swedish welfare state. Linnéa Lindsköld, PhD, and Senior Lecturer in Library and Information Science at the University of Borås has conducted several discourse oriented studies of cultural and literature policy focusing on the key concepts quality and diversity, as well as radical right cultural policy. She is currently working on two research projects financed by the Swedish Research Council: The making of the reading citizen. Public debate and policy 1945-2017 and The Welfare Regime of Literature. The Function of Literature in Sweden 19371976. Lindsköld is part of the editorial board for the Nordic journal on cultural policy and a member of the scientific committe for the Nordic conference on cultural policy research.

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