Abstract
In the analysis provided in Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, orig. 1962), Jürgen Habermas establishes an inspirational sociohistorical framework for sociological studies of literature and literary polemics in a macroperspective. The so-called literary public sphere evolved in Europe in the 18th century as part of an arena that the bourgeoisie would later use for political purposes.
At the time of the publication of Habermas's study, however, Habermas saw the function of the contemporary public sphere as seriously threatened, colonized by state and commercial interests. The article builds on part of a study by the Finnish literary scholar Trygve Söderling, who employs Habermas's perspective in his analysis of four Finnish novels written in Swedish (in so called Finland-Swedish) and published in the 1960s, and in his interpretation of the most important literary polemic in the field of Finland-Swedish literature of that decade.
Söderling's results are extended in light of material obtained from analyzing the reception of works written in the 1960s and 1970s by the Finland-Swedish authors Henrik Tikkanen and Christer Kihlman, the reception of which led to the greatest literary polemic of the Finland-Swedish literary field in the 1970s. According to some criteria, one can assert a return to something closer to the ideal liberal model of the functioning of the public sphere, while according to other criteria one can observe a continuation of the tendencies outlined by Habermas in 1962.