Litterære strategiar og sjølvopplevd kreft

Abstract

In this article four literary works that thematise cancer are analysed in light of two recent trends in society: (1) the emergence of the bodily turn and the writing of one’s cancer experience through illness narratives, and (2) the increasing tendency towards an autobiographically influenced literature. The literary works comprise the novel Ei vinterreise (A Winter’s Journey) by Ragnar Hovland (2001), the novel La meg sove til dette bare er en drøm (Let Me Sleep Until This is Just a Dream) by Ellisiv Stifoss-Hanssen (2014), and two poetry collections, Den tredje porten (The Third Gate) by Åse-Marie Nesse (2000) and Muntre dødsdikt og andre dikt (Cheerful Death Poems and Other Poems) by Jan Jakob Tønseth (2015). All four authors have or had cancer at the time of writing, and the four works open up for a reading where the cancer is closely related to the life of the author. The article examines what the different books achieve by writing about cancer experiences in literary genres. A close reading of the books reveals that a literary representation opens up a more nuanced investigation of cancer experiences than what is found in more traditional illness narratives.