Kirjallisuus ja moraaliset emootiot

Tendenssikirjallisuuden 1800-lukulainen lajitausta

• Saija Isomaa Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74876

Abstract

Literature and Moral Emotions. The Poetics of the Nineteenth-century Nordic Tendensroman.

The article focuses on the poetics and history of tendenslitteratur, or purposeful literature, in nineteenth-century Finnish literature and literary discussion. Tendenslitteratur is an umbrella term for purposeful novels, novellas, poems and plays. The term was used to refer to both thesis literature, which offers ideological solutions to social problems, and to purposeful literature, which focuses on putting issues under debate and engendering reader with moral emotions. The term and the genre migrated to Finland in the 1840s, but the term has been rarely used after the 1910s. However, works in the genre have been written up to the present.

A nineteenth-century purposeful work attempts to affect a reader’s emotions and communicate on some social or moral view. The story is central for the view, because the reader has to encode the work’s message from cause and effect in the story. The paper suggests that amalgam technique, spokeperson characters, and intertextual allusions to other debated works, are also part of the genre’s repertoire. A purposeful work often has a climax in which the message is highlighted.

The article advances into stance-taking genres by introducing the concept of moral emotion, and by showing the connection between the genre and the moral values of the community. By doing this, the article develops a contextual approach to literary genres.