Meaning Inhabiting Structure: Jan Erik Vold and the Limits of Experiment in Norwegian Literature of the 1960s
Abstract
In the history of literature, the term "experiment" is for the most part rooted in the 1960s. Its meaning and field of reference vary with respect to the context in which it is placed.
The article aims to provide, and interpret, several instances of experimental techniques in Norwegian literature of the 1960s against the backdrop of Jan Erik Vold's poetry. It outlines the occurrence of the techniques as well as their forms, both in the context of the Scandinavian literary Neo-Avant-Garde together with its intellectual impulses and in the frame of a specific author's discourse.
The article aims to demonstrate that the adjective ""experimental"" in 1960s Norwegian literature did not suggest any particular genre definition; rather, it was a general method of reconstructing literary language and reconstructing literature's relation to reality. In such an environment, as the article seeks to demonstrate, experimental techniques (that is, visual, sound, and concrete poetry) thus become merely one of many textual practices, which are organically integrated into non-experimental poetic techniques.
When juxtaposed with Czechoslovak experimental literature, the phenomenon appears to assume a position outside the established binary opposition of ""natural v. artificial"" poetry.