Louisa M. Alcott og Dikken Zwilgmeyer. Et nettverk av relasjoner

Abstract

What textual relations may be established between the two most successful writers of children’s literature in the USA and Norway during the 19th century – Louisa M. Alcott and Dikken Zwilgmeyer? The reception in Norway is split on Zwilgmeyer’s literary ancestry, whether she belongs to a tradition instituted by Alcott’s Little Women, or whether she is to be regarded as the initiator of a new tradition herself. The aim of this article is to investigate a hypothesis about connections between the two authors’ work by studying the impact of Alcott in Norway before the 20th century, comparing Alcott’s Little Women (1868–69) and Eight Cousins (1875) with Zwilgmeyer’s Inger Johanne series, Fire kusiner (1899) and Anniken Præstgaren (1900). The sources include a reader survey from 1902, the first of its kind, mapping the reading of Zwilgmeyer’s generation. Central to the discussion is the question of intertextuality and reading as a process, activating a text’s network of relations.