Julie Allen utilizes the lives and friendship of the Danish literary critic George Brandes (1842-1927) and the silent film star Asta Nielsen (1881-1972) to explore questions of culture and national identity in early twentieth-century Denmark. Danish culture and politics were influenced in this period by the country’s deeply ambivalent relationship with Germany. Brandes and Nielsen, both of whom lived and worked in Germany for significant periods of time, were seen as dangerously cosmopolitan by the Danish public, even while they served as international cultural ambassadors for the very society that rejected them during their lifetimes. Allen argues that they were the prototypical representatives of a socially liberal and culturally modern ‘Danishness’ (Danskhed) that Denmark itself only gradually (and later) grew into.
This lively study brings its central characters to life while offering an original, thought provoking analysis of the origins and permutations of Danish modernism and Danish national identity–issues that continue to be significant in today’s multi-ethnic Denmark. Icons of Danish Modernity is a book about the uneasy waves that arise when celebrities take on national symbolism, and the beginnings of this formula in the early twentieth century.
Table of Content
Preface
Acknowledgments
Section One | Introduction
1. The Critic and the Actress: Crafting Art and National Identity
Section Two | George Brandes
2. The Literary Revolutionary: Marketing Danish Modernity in Imperial Germany
3. The Outspoken Radical: Political Journalism and Provocative Pacifism
Section Three | Asta Nielsen
4. The Danish Diva: Identity Games in Prewar Silent Cinema
5. The New Woman: Enacting Scandinavian Modernity on Screen
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Julie Allen is professor of comparative arts and letters at Brigham Young University. She is the author of Screening Europe in Australasia: Transnational Silent Film Before and After the Rise of Hollywood (University of Exeter Press, 2022), Danish but Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity, 1850-1920 (University of Utah Press, 2017), and Icons of Danish Modernity: Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen (University of Washington Press, 2012).
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