130097 VO Finnish Literature (2015S)

Paavo Haavikko (1931-2008) was one of the most important and profilic of Finnish Modernist writers: a poet, a novelist and a playwright, an editor and a publisher, a businessman, a historian and a cultural critic. The course casts light on typical characteristics of Haavikko's work, his literary career and important cultural role in postwar Finland. Money and economy, and their relation to social power is a pervasive theme in Haavikko, and therefore the course has a special emphasis on the role of money, focusing on such works as Kaksikymmentä ja yksi (English transl. One and Twenty), and Rauta-aika, which can be seen as a rewriting of Finnish cultural myths – most notably, the canonized interpretation of the Kalevala as a national epic.