Aesthetics of Protestantism in Northern Europe

The book series publishes investigations in the significance of Protestantism for the aesthetics of Nordic cultures and thereby helps to remedy what Inger Hammar had termed the "religion-blindness" of Cultural Studies. The Reformation was established and institutionalized in the Nordic countries statewide and enduringly within a few decades as the state church either until now or until very recently. This was not only one of the most important political factors in the political, social and ecclesiastical history of Scandinavia, but it has also had a deep impact on cultural life in all its forms until today: on literature, visual arts, music, on both high and popular culture, on cultural, political and educational practices. The repercussions concern content (presence of Christian inter-texts) and form: We might detect a predilection for simplicity, logocentrism, purism, worldliness as obligation, tension between individualism and collectivism and in consequence a tendency to prefer aesthetic forms as subjective poetry, autobiography and engaged literature. Protestantism as a common denominator of Nordic cultures calls attention to the significant common ground of different characteristics and developments, on special features compared with other cultural areas and on the tension-filled dynamics of Nordic cultures on the background of other transnational developments.