The Elitist Conception of Culture and Literature in the Essays and Lectures of Georg Brandes and Knut Hamsun
2017
Abstract
The chapter focuses on the elitist nature of selected essays and lectures of Georg Brandes and Knut Hamsun, who contributed substantially to a major re-orientation of Scandinavian literature in the 1890s. The texts under discussion, from around 1890, represent an appeal for exceptional literary works written by spiritual aristocrats, and directly or indirectly dismiss contemporary Realism and Naturalism.
Hamsun in particular argues that a truly valuable literature cannot be understood and appreciated by the ordinary reader, a standpoint which can be regarded as characteristic of many modernist writers.