Maskin och idyll : teknik och pastorala ideal hos Strindberg och Heidenstam

Sammanfattning: This thesis analyses the writers August Strindberg and Verner von Heidenstam approach to, and interpretation of, modern society and the technological civilization. Strindbergs criticism of civilization is first expressed in political, later in religious terms: he examines critically negative consequences of modernity – for nature, man and society. Heidenstam criticism is about alienation, about the instrumental attitude to life that modernity has favoured, and in its place he lifts up the joy of life, the immediate, sensual, erotic life. Both change their positions, partly as a consequence of the processes of industrialisation in Sweden.The thesis also develops the concept of "pastoral ideal" and "pastoral composition patterns" to understand durable, long-living figures of thought in Western civilization debate. Pastoral civilization debate involves a critique seeking an ideal which consists of a synthesis between nature and culture, who believe that our civilization need to take a step in the direction of nature – but not to nature. Modernity debate has a grammar, which is possible to analyse using concepts such as "the political pastoral", "the tragic pastoral", "technical pastoral" and "the sentimental pastoral".