Five recent contributions to Yeats studies—Finneran's new edition of The Poems, Jeffares's New Commentary keyed to this edition, the second volume of the Yeats Annual (also edited by Finneran), Steinman's Yeats's Heroic Figures and the late Paul de Man's The Rhetoric of Romanticism (nearly half of which treats Yeats and his traditions in some form)—all make provocative reading. Finneran and Jeffares, for example, are locked in an intellectually fierce, if politely staged, scholarly debate over the appropriate ordering of Yeats’ poems. Finneran favors the division of the poems into lyrical, narrative and dramatic sections perpetuated by the previous, so-called “Definitive” edition of the Collected Poems. Jeffares prefers a strictly chronological ordering that would begin with The Wandering of Oisin and include narrative and dramatic poems interspersed among the famous lyrics according to the actual shape of the career.

Yeats himself, of course, was of two minds on the matter, wanting separate editions of his work: both a multivolume limited edition deluxe for the initiated, and for the “people,” a single volume edition arranged as Finneran has for the most part arranged things. Finneran has included many uncollected poems and poems only available in the Variorum edition of the poetry; most of these would not be to Yeats's liking here, one suspects, since they are indeed quite minor. To Finneran's credit, however, he has also restored what became Last Poems to the order Yeats originally intended, having the career close not with “Under Ben Bulben” and its heroic pose but with “Politics” and its rueful lament for an old man's lost opportunities for youthful passion. This debate between Jeffares and Finneran has the effect of making one reconsider Yeats and the shape of his career and try out both possible versions: Yeats as master-maker of lyric volumes and Yeats in the process of slowly, painfully progressing to that status, with many wayward side trips into such things as The Shadowy Waters and its many rewritings. Such controversy can only help stimulate new studies of the poetry informed by ever finer scholarly discriminations. But for a more detailed account of this debate and other related matters of textual analysis, see Finneran's Editing Yeats's Poems.

Even Steinman's Yeats's Heroic Figures and the second volume of Yeats Annual contribute to these delightful revisionary prospects. I say “even” because the habitual expectation we have concerning strictly scholarly studies is of rigorous dullness.

Narrative medicine as a field of research

Narrative medicine is a growing field of teaching and research that has grown out of an interdisciplinary interest in medicine which is centered on the person, and it is regarded by some as the most significant innovation in the medical hu-manities (Solomon, 2015; Bleakley, 2015). The vision for our work in narrative medicine at the University of Southern Denmark is to enable the field to become a prominent element in the training of physicians, nurses, and other health pro-fessionals. In addition, the researchers will examine the degree to which this field can become an integral part of the health system, making a crucial con-tribution to the development of innovative and evidence-based approaches to health promotion, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation for citizens and patients. Thus, the overall ambition is that narrative medicine should make a substantial contribution to meeting complex social challenges by retaining and developing a health system that recognizes each person as an individual with social relations in the context of diagnosis, treatment, nursing, and care.

Narrative medicine was given its name and has had its methodology estab-lished since the beginning of this century by Rita Charon, a medical doctor and professor of internal medicine with a PhD in English literature at Columbia University in New York. Prior to creating the term “narrative medicine,” Charon was a proponent of the development of “narrative ethics.” described as an at-tempt to recognize and acknowledge “the singular meaning of particular hu-man events” (Charon and Montello, 2002, p. ix). Through the creation of the interdisciplinary field of narrative medicine, she extended her scope to include narratives and aspects of narrative in all medical practice, with a particular focus on the value of empathy and ethics:

With the aim of promoting clinicians’ understanding of patients’ narratives of illness, Charon and her colleagues at Columbia University brought to bear methods of close reading and creative writing, with the result that these have been adapted and integrated in the teaching of physicians and other health pro-fessionals.

Silva Lisboa's role during Brazil's Independence needed to be reassessed and his publications, reinterpreted. By challenging some of these classic interpretations that presented either a positive only or negative only view of the future viscount, I introduced some nuances and proved the two main arguments of this work: that the author was part of a broad Reformist or Catholic Enlightenment movement and that he could be perceived as a paradigmatic advocate of an Independence that would not necessarily take place. I did so by examining his publications through the study of the history of political ideas, overcoming analysis that depict him as either a pro-independence liberal ‘founding father’ or as a mere reactionary in favour of the Union with Portugal under the Crown of Braganza, whereas he was neither of these things.

Highlighting aspects of Silva Lisboa's journalistic publications that have not previously been discussed was important to establish the framework for a deeper analysis of a section of his vast work. Until now the focus of most studies regarding Silva Lisboa's career as a journalist has been the controversial debates in the press in which he was presented as embracing a proto-conservative, pro-union camp against those whose main goal was the freedom of the Brazilian people. I have challenged this view by presenting a broader perspective and showing that Silva Lisboa's active protagonism as a journalist, from the departure of the King to Portugal in April 1821 until the calling of a Brazilian Assembly in 1822, contributed to Independence even without embracing it.

To investigate these proposals, I decided to limit the focus of this monograph to Silva Lisboa's journalistic works, where the extent of his ideas needed to be limited by restrictions of space and newsworthiness, commenting on events while they were taking place. It did not prevent him from publishing dense pamphlets, loaded with references and metaphors that demand a degree of prior reading, not only from today's readers but also those of the nineteenth century. This, I believe, may also have limited the contemporary comprehension of these publications, and may have led to many of the criticisms accusing the future Cairu of being a snob, a charlatan, or antiquated and behind the times.

Since 2002, 48 of the 50 biggest box-office worldwide openings of any movies have been fantasy films. Hollywood blockbusters based on comic book characters (Marvel Avengers or DC Justice League), fantasy novels (like Harry Potter or Twilight), screenplay adaptations (like Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean), or fantasy cartoons (like Beauty and the Beast) have grossed more money by far on opening weekends than any other genre (WeekendRecords 2021). All in all, these movies have grossed over US$20 billion. Of course, the numbers are skewed by Western and Anglophone countries where people have higher disposable incomes and films are screened in cinemas, but the popularity extends worldwide, including out of the box office. In the same period, only one fantasy movie won the Academy Award for best picture, and only four have even been nominated out of 141 (Oscar Awards Databases). Why do people queue up for such movies that are hardly realistic and rarely critically acclaimed? Why do some fictional characters and their stories strangely arrest our mind and affect us so deeply? The sheer extent of this phenomenon begs for an explanation.

In this book, we propose that such movies speak to—and build upon—a way of imagining the world that is common to humans and that compensates for certain gaps in modern life or amplifies dominant perceptions. We see such movies as examples of modern myths in popular culture that fulfill a similar role to the one played by myths enacted in earlier times. The ancients told legends and acted out plays and rituals while we watch movies and read novels. J. R. R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings influenced generations of readers, filmmakers, and now a gaming culture, strived consciously for mythopoeia, myth-making ( J. R. R. Tolkien, Humphrey, and C. Tolkien 2000; Tarnas 2019). “Successful films, like successful myths […] stir us to renewed action, emotion and thought” (Plate 2003, 7–8). Indeed, films and fiction are not the only examples. Myths are fundamentally symbolic, and from that symbolic perspective much of modern culture can be seen as myth-making. This includes, for instance, contemporary religious expressions and political drama or even the history that, in the words of anthropologist Victor Turner, “repeats the deep myths of culture” (Turner 1974, 122).

During the three decades in which the medical humanities has been recognized as a field of study, many literature professors have relied on the belief that read-ing, especially reading fiction, teaches students to be more empathic. Since neither becoming an empath nor becoming an expert reader of literary texts is an easy endeavor, the question of whether one can become more empathic by reading literature remains open (Pedersen, 2010; Jurecic, 2011; 2012; Ham-mond and Kim, 2014; Keen, 2014). Can empathic understanding be fostered in a literature course for medical students or premedical students? Does empathy transfer easily from the literature class to the clinic? And under what conditions might empathy endure, deepen, or dissipate over time? Although some teach-ers and students enthusiastically affirm that reading enhances empathy, so far, there is little agreement about what the word “empathy” means and how it can be taught.

One of the most astonishing paradoxes in modern military history is the fact that, during the Second World War, the extreme racist SS organisation engendered an army, which was possibly the most multi-ethnic and transnational army that the twentieth century ever witnessed. This was brought about by the establishment of a military branch of the SS, the Waffen-SS. During its existence, it expanded from a modest bodyguard at Hitler's disposal to a mass army through whose ranks passed more than a million men. Until the outbreak of war, the SS maintained high standards as to personnel, who were all volunteers. Not only did they have to meet tough physical and racial demands; by joining, they also entered a Nazi order of warriors demanding absolute faith in Hitler, unconditional subordination and profound ideological dedication as the pillars of their martial calling.

The head of the SS, the Reichsfu?hrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, envisaged an e?lite force of devoted Nazis, who would alternate between active duty in the field and other kinds of SS activities. They were not only to be soldiers but also role models leading a life as wholly dedicated SS men. They were to let their identity as members of the ‘order’ permeate all their doings including choice of spouse, reproduction, interior decoration of their homes, and celebration of red-letter days. Himmler hoped to create an elite of committed Nazis, welded together in a loyal brotherhood and hardened through war into merciless individuals, who would pitilessly annihilate the Third Reich's real and alleged enemies; be they hostile troops, Jews, mentally ill or any other so-called sub-humans.

While, until the outbreak of war, this order remained relatively homogeneous, the situation changed markedly during the war. Now, the SS began to moderate the demands on race and physical capability, introduced conscription and started to recruit from all over Europe. With these changes, the SS got new recruits, for example, from Norway, who were often as ideologically zealous as were the original German members. However, men who merely wished to avoid forced labour or were pressured into signing up also joined the ranks – individuals, who might not have heard of the SS before, now saw themselves in the uniform of this organisation. Additionally, there were hundreds of thousands of recruits from ethnic groups, whom the SS would never have admitted before the war.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, an unexpected female character entered Colombian literature through a serial novel (novela de folletín) published in the newspaper El mensajero (“The Messenger”). Authored by Soledad Acosta de Samper (1833–1913) in 1867, Dolores tells the story of a young woman who is introduced as the traditional romantic character, extremely beautiful, orphaned at a very early age, raised by a wealthy aunt, and a victim of leprosy, a terminal disease inherited from her father. What makes the character of Dolores unique in nineteenth-century Latin American literary production are the actions she takes after knowing that leprosy will take over her body. Instead of passively waiting for the inevitable, she chooses to isolate herself from everyone, repairs a small hut away from home where she has decided to live her final days and, most interestingly, reads and records her experiences as a young woman whose body becomes deformed by leprosy. To this end, Dolores builds a new place and pens a journal, activities that provide her with material and symbolic refuge from her sufferings. In the spaces provided by the hut and her writing, she finds some relief when confronting her impending death and, in the process, she uncovers her voice. This literary character distinguishes itself from the traditional romantic female protagonist of the nineteenth-century novel whose representation reproduced time and again the feminine ideal incarnated in the figure of the domestic angel. It also constitutes an example of Hispanic women's reflection about finding and/or making a place to escape from the scrutiny, persecution and harassment of others to establish a dialogue with themselves, discover, reflect, exercise and write their voices. Not only did they find and create refuges for themselves but, in the process, they also benefited from the healing properties of writing. Refuge for these writers was not only the physical space of the hut, the convent or other places in the world away from home but also the space in which they read and wrote at their own will, making a conscious choice that will allow their voices to flow and express their inner worlds.

In March 1945, an American interrogation officer asked Unterscharführer Kurt Kretschmer of Division Das Reich about his division's massacres and other atrocities in Southern France. He replied, ‘I do not know what happened, I was not there.’ The scope of the Nazi crimes made the investigation and prosecution gigantic tasks. In many cases ‘a perfect crime’ was at hand. Apart from the perpetrators, there were hardly any surviving witnesses. But even if evidence was extant it was uncertain that this would fall into the hands of the prosecutors and the judges. In the early processes, the war and the chaos of the times were still so close that the prosecution lacked a proper survey and the knowledge that later historical research based on archival material has been able to provide. Under these conditions, the perpetrators had an opportunity of lying their way out of their complicity in a way that would not be possible today.

Apart from being faced with an enormous burden of investigation, the Allies were hampered by big politics and the economic and military interests. In many cases, political-pragmatic considerations took precedence over the judicial processes. Therefore, the prosecution of the Nazi henchmen was imperfect in more than one way. First, because some sentences were passed on the basis of limited investigation and documentation. Secondly, because of limited resources or political consideration, many perpetrators were either not prosecuted at all, had very mild sentences or were granted amnesties.

The Sentence at Nuremberg

In November 1945, in the South-German city of Nuremberg, the Allies started the legal reckoning with the Nazi top tier. Over the following year, not only 22 surviving top Nazis but also the entire administrative and political system constructed by the Nazis, were being prosecuted. The tribunal had the authority to sentence whole institutions and organisations as criminals. The reason for this was to ease later prosecution of individual persons; hence the membership of such bodies would in itself become a criminal act. From 1 September to 1 October 1946, the sentences were passed: 12 death sentences, seven imprisonments and three acquittals, the NSDAP, the Gestapo, the SD and the SS were declared criminal organisations.

Along with other SS organisations, the Waffen-SS was dealt with in this sentence. In their testimonies, General Hausser and others tried to convince the court that the Waffen-SS was the fourth service of the Wehrmacht, completely separate from the SS.

In Sweden from the 1990s onwards, Gothic has invaded all cultural registers – highbrow literature, feature film, popular culture, children's books and young-adult fiction. Furthermore, it has been well received by audiences and critics both inside and outside the country. Most works are produced in response to the international tradition of Gothic with references to international classics and iconic works produced outside Scandinavia. In that way, Swedish Gothic upholds a long domestic tradition of densely intertextual Gothic that goes back to the Romantic period and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Still, Swedish Gothic is a rather unexplored subject in the field of Gothic studies. One reason for this neglect is the global predominance of the Anglo-American tradition and scholarly studies dedicated to it. Another explanation is the strong realism-prone literary practice in Sweden; Gothic texts with self-conscious unrealism, anxiety-provoking imaginary and a mode of revealing something unconscious or supernatural have not met the requirements as highbrow literature until the late twentieth century. As Rosemary Jackson writes about fantastic art in general, Swedish Gothic has been ignored by native literary critics who have been engaged with ‘establishment ideals rather than with subverting them’. It was first in the 1990s that the existence of Gothic fiction was systematically examined in a number of studies by Yvonne Leffler. Since the millennium, scholars such as Mattias Fyhr, Sofia Wijkmark and Henrik Johnsson have studied different writers and aspects of Swedish Gothic. Most of the early studies have been dealing with nineteenth-century literature and canonised writers, such as August Strindberg and Selma Lagerlöf. In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in other cultural forms and Gothic stories in different media, such as film, rock music and young-adult fiction. Drawing on these studies, this chapter will give a survey of Swedish Gothic from the early nineteenth century until the present moment.

The Rise of Swedish Gothic

By the end of the eighteenth century, many of the first English, German and French Gothic novels were imported, available for sale and possible to borrow from commercial libraries in Sweden. In addition, some of them were quickly translated into Swedish. For example, Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796) was published in Swedish in 1800–04. Five novels by Ann Radcliffe were available in Swedish between 1800 and 1806, among them The Mystery of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797).

One of the most fascinating aspects of the language we share is the fact that very young children often can be heard conjugating irregular verbs such as “I know,” whose irregular past tense is “I knew,” as if they were regular verbs: “I knowed.” In a similar fashion, young children as young as four years old recognize that a story is not well formed (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 20) so that they balk when, for instance, one starts “The Three Little Pigs” with the brick house, and they do so even if they have never heard the story before. These facts suggest that the seeming volitional and spontaneous language we deploy is, in fact, ordered by discursive structures, which organize the reality they seem to represent. In his passionate study of the culture and community of the deaf, Dr. Oliver Sacks notes that

It was far from all SS soldiers who were prepared to die for Hitler and Nazism. In March 1945, the western Allies crossed the Rhine, and the following month the Soviet offensive against Berlin was launched. No one doubted any longer that the downfall of the Third Reich was imminent. Thus, as a soldier of the Reich one might choose to go down with the regime or try to survive either by surrendering oneself to the Allies or by deserting.

During the last days of the war, the German SS men fought primarily in their own country and might hope to return to civilian life when the war was over. The foreign Waffen-SS soldiers’ situation was different; many of them would be facing trial in their home countries. Nonetheless, many perceived prosecution at home as preferable compared to falling into the hands of the Red Army, for example by seeking refuge in the remaining embassies in Berlin, such as the Danish and Swedish. These endeavours were not particularly successful, but many succeeded in avoiding capture in various other ways. From the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, Baltic Waffen-SS soldiers got across to the Swedish coast or to Denmark and mixed with refugees. At the moment of surrender, other non-German SS men hurried into civvies pretending to be forced labourers, or they hid with friends, family, or girlfriends.

The extent to which the former SS soldiers managed to hide may be illustrated by the case of the 1st SS brigade. During post-war legal processes in West Germany, almost 1,000 former members of the unit were asked about their spell as prisoners-of-war, and it turned out that 10 per cent had completely avoided incarceration. Considering their war record as continuous participants in genocide it comes as no surprise that former members of the 1st SS brigade would do whatever it took to evade captivity. Those who, like the 1st SS brigade, belonged among the very worst henchmen of the Holocaust, were of course especially tempted to try to assume new identities during their imprisonment or simply lie low vis-à-vis the victors. Through listening to radio, Allied broadcasts, or the Nazis’ own propaganda, there was an awareness that the Allies had an ambitious agenda of bringing Nazi culprits to justice and that SS men were very much in the allied spotlight.