Snoilskys Svenska bilder i skolan och kulturminnets förändringar

Abstract

Snoilsky’s Svenska bilder at School and the Changes of Cultural Memory: The article investigates the reception of Carl Snoilsky’s Svenska bilder (Swedish Pictures) in Swedish schools, from the 1890s until today, in the light of the concept of cultural memory. For more than half a century, Snoilsky’s cycle of poems, depicting important events and figures in Sweden’s early modern history, belonged to the literary school canon; three special school editions were published in 1894, 1931, and 1939 respectively, and frequently reprinted. In the 1960s, however, due to radical educational reforms, and the ensuing abandoning the idea of patriotic upbringing, the collection of historical poems lost its strong standing as a set reading, and it has since been more or less absent from the teaching of literature at school. It is concluded that the reception of Svenska bilder in the educational context reflects in several respects pronounced changes of Swedish cultural memory during the 20th century.