IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section B

Abstract

All types of fiction preserve cultural heritage. The most obvious kinds are film and television series, which directly preserves through visual and auditory representations. For example, in the form of showing buildings, cars, ships, clothing, but also rituals, manners, games, handcrafts and forms of work, etc. Literary fiction preserves cultural heritage on its own terms and in its own way. The purpose of the presentation is to characterize the literary fiction’s means of preserving cultural heritage. My presentation rests on the basic assumption that literary fiction articulates a special form of knowledge that can preserve culture. Fiction is perceived as a mode, i.e. a way of expressing oneself. Literary fiction as well as other types of fiction construct artificial autotelic worlds by simultaneously referring to the context and to itself. The digital relationship between the literary text and the referent creates a particular openness in the representation of culture as well as a vast space for interpretation of the represented phenomenon. The material on which the study is based primarily consists of prose narratives – novels and short stories. Danish children’s literature set in Greenland is used as example material. Here, I focus on Danish children’s literature’s representation of Greenlandic culture.