Chair no. 11 - Mats Malm
Literary historian.
Elected: 2018.
Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, has in his research into older, primarily Nordic literature, investigated how texts change meaning over time, and in his work as a translator, taken a hands-on approach to questions of the same nature.
Mats Malm was born in 1964. In 1996, he defended his doctoral thesis entitled Minervas äpple. Om diktsyn, tolkning och bildspråk inom nordisk göticism (Minerva’s Apple. On Poetic Vision, Interpretation and Imagery in Nordic Gothicism) at the University of Gothenburg. Central to his exposition is the matter of how people during the time of Nordic Gothicism related to ancient and Old Norse heritage in the formation of their national identities. In general, the question of how we read and interpret older literature is a recurring theme in Malm’s research. To what extent is it possible to go back and view such texts through the eyes of a reader of that time? Malm demonstrates that, in order to do so, a thorough understanding is required of the entire context in which they were written.
In his book Textens auktoritet. de första svenska romanernas villkor (The Authority of the Text: the Conditions for the First Swedish Novels, 2001), Malm describes the rather barren literary climate in Sweden around the mid-18th century, which coincided with the birth of the modern novel in Europe. Among the subjects he raises for discussion are the links between morality, literary production and nationality. Of particular interest to Malm is the extent to which and in what way the Swedish novels of this time challenged the prevailing system of norms, including that by which stories based on reality were to be regarded as dangerous and pernicious. In Det liderliga språket (2004; Voluptuous Language and Poetic Ambivalence. The Example of Swedish Baroque, 2011), published three years later, Malm conducts an ideologically related study of Swedish baroque poetry in which he investigates the then prevailing view of aesthetic pleasure as a potential threat and of sensual language as being unmanly, lewd and contagious. In Poesins röster. Avlyssningar av äldre litteratur (The Voices of Poetry. Listening in on Older Literature, 2012), Malm asks the question of how literature changes meaning over time through changes in media and how different voices can be perceived in the same poem, depending on the audience. For example, poetry that a modern-day reader might perceive as simply beautiful or pleasurable may, for the reader of the time, have contained an obvious note of criticism.
Among Malm’s work of a slightly different character is the richly illustrated book Ivar Arosenius, berättaren (Ivar Arosenius, the Narrator, 2022), in which the artist in question is presented through his fairy tale series, literary endeavours and staging of himself in a number of art works.
Malm is also a translator and has translated such works as the Prose Edda from Icelandic to Swedish. In 1998–99 he was a visiting professor at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. Since 2004, he has been a professor of literary studies at the University of Gothenburg. He has also been a professor at the Institute for Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo and Chairman of the Advisory Group to the Riksbanken Jubileumsfond. He moreover heads Litteraturbanken (www.litteraturbanken.se), a digital project that makes available Swedish fiction and other texts of importance to the nation’s understanding of its literary cultural heritage. In addition to all of the above, Malm has also edited a number of literary anthologies.
In 2018, he succeeded Klas Östergren on chair number 11 of the Swedish Academy and has been Permanent Secretary since June 1 2019.