P SOM I POETIK. Poeter om poesi i svenska litteraturtidskrifter 1950–2019

Abstract

This thesis traces the modern history of Swedish poetics from 1950 to 2019, analysing 200 texts on poetry published by poets in literary magazines. Poetics – understood as a broad literary field of prose texts commenting on poetry – is largely overlooked in Swedish research. By focusing on the main platform for poets’ poetics during the period and examining both canonical and lesser-known texts, the study highlights poetics as a distinct tradition. In contrast to earlier research, which has treated contemporary poetics as a formal, self-reflexive genre, the thesis proposes that poetics since the late 18th century can be comprehended as a rhetorical genre grounded in a shared situation and centred on the recurring question: what is poetry? In each analytical chapter, chronological surveys are carried out based on thematic and formal aspects, combined with local case studies on dominant trends and individual examples. This approach enables identification of both continuities and contextual turning points that reshape the forms and arguments of poets’ poetics. By situating the material within cultural, economic, media-historical and intellectual-historical contexts, the study demonstrates a shift in poetics during the period: from literary-historical positioning and classical argumentation for clearly articulated theses, towards a stronger individual focus, rhetorically hybridised forms and reasoning structured around an eclectic selection of conversational partners. The study also argues that poetics partly has moved from forensic or deliberative rhetoric – that judge the past or put forward proposals for the future – to epideictic rhetoric that celebrates the value of poetry. Alongside these changes, the material displays a striking continuity in poetological claims. Throughout the period, poetics are shaped by the notion that poetic language can only be defined negatively. This idea persists across argumentation for varying poetic methods, partly due to the shared rhetorical situation which constraints possible responses to the question of what poetry is. Over time the notion becomes so decisive that classical argumentation gradually loses its function. Poets often rely on key terms or performative techniques that signal the thesis to an audience presumed to already share their values. The study thus argues that, from around the 2000s, poets’ poetics move towards a renegotiation of the distinction between classical poetics and aesthetics as formulated by Immanuel Kant. Poetological claims no longer need to be tested against an imagined shared sensibility through a reflexive process, as this sensibility have been empirically realised, resulting in aesthetic experience moving towards the ‘objective principle’ Kant believed art to elude. These broader outlines rest on a limited corpus and can only be properly assessed within a wider, international discussion on poetics, ideally encompassing poetological reflection in diverse contexts. The thesis thus concludes by calling for further studies on the history of poetics, both in Sweden and internationally.