2021 - WEST AND EAST IN LITERATURE – THE SWEDISH PERSPECTIVE

WEST AND EAST IN LITERATURE – THE SWEDISH PERSPECTIVE
Saadat Karimi
PhD.
University of Gothenburg & University of Stockholm
Department of Swedish and Multilingualism
saadat.karimi-AT-su.se saakar-AT-edu.umu.se
Orcid id: 0000-0002-5296-3752
Abstract. One way to get to know other cultures and cultural heritage is through fiction,
which is an important part of the language/literature subject in the Swedish high school system.
The Swedish National Agency for Education, like other EU countries, shows how the consequences
of globalization require that people must be able to see the value of living in a multicultural society,
and that this can be done by creating a secure identity in their own culture as well as creating an
understanding of others' living conditions. However, it is important to ask to what extent these
guidelines are actually followed in practice. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review on the
issue of the existence of what I have chosen to call non-Western literature in the Swedish
educational system. To sum up, review shows that the work with non-Western fiction takes place
in different ways in Literature classes at the Swedish school, but it does not differ from the reading
of Western fiction. This work includes smaller seminar-like groups, individual book selection,
theme work according to the circle model and literary history. The reason why non-western fiction
does not get the same space as other fiction is due to lack of time, lack of knowledge and interest
among many teachers and lack of resources. The main common denominator of all three interview
candidates is that the recognition factor in students is important in reading. Teachers agree that by
reading about different cultures and human destinies in non-Western literature, students both get
the opportunity to connect to something while expanding their knowledge.
Keywords: literature, orient, fiction, eurocentrism, western canon, postcolonialism
QƏRB VƏ ŞƏRQ ƏDƏBİYYATI - İSVEÇ PERSPEKTİVİ
Səadət Kərimi
Xülasə. Digər mədəniyyətləri və mədəni irsi tanımağın bir yolu orta məktəb sistemində
dil/ədəbiyyat fənninin vacib bir hissəsi olan bədii ədəbiyyatdır. İsveç Milli Təhsil Nazirliyi, digər
Aİ ölkələrində olduğu kimi, qloballaşmanın nəticələrinin insanların çoxmədəniyyətli bir
cəmiyyətdə yaşamağın dəyərini görməsini tələb etməsini və bunun öz mədəniyyətlərində etibarlı
şəxsiyyətlər yetişdirməklə, həm də şagirdlərdə başqa ölkələrin də yaşayış şərtləri haqqında bir
anlayış yaratmaqla edilə biləcəyini göstərir. Bununla birlikdə, bu təlimatların praktikada nə
dərəcədə yerinə yetirildiyini sorğulamaq gərəkir. Bu məqələnin məqsədi, İsveç təhsil sistemində
qeyri-qərb ədəbiyyatı sayılan bədii-ədəbiyyat nümunələrinin mövcudluğu məsələsinə dair bir
araşdırma icmalı verməkdir. Təhlil göstərir ki, qeyri-qərb bədii ədəbiyyatın tədrisi işi İsveç
məktəblərində fərqli yollarla baş verir, lakin Qərb bədii ədəbiyyatının tədrisindən fərqlənmir. Bu
işə daha kiçik seminar tipli qruplar, fərdi kitab seçimi, dairə modelində kitab müzakirələri və
ədəbiyyat tarixinə uyğun tema işləri daxildir. Qeyri-qərb bədii ədəbiyyatına qərb ədəbiyyatı qədər
yer verilməməsinin səbəbləri vaxt azlığı, müəllimlərdə məlumat və maraq çatışmazlığı və vəsait
çatışmazlığıdır. Müəllimlərin ümumi fikri isə şagirdlərin qeyri-qərb ədəbiyyatının oxuması və
tanıması onların şəxsiyyət kimi formalaşması, dünyagörüşü və mədəniyyətlərin qovuşması
baxımından vacib amildir.
ЗАПАД И ВОСТОК В ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ - ШВЕДСКАЯ ПЕРСПЕКТИВА
Саадат Карими
Аннотация. Один из способов ознакомления с другими культурами и культурным
наследием — это художественная литература, что является важной частью литературного
предмета в шведской средней школе. Министерство Образования Швеции, как и другие
страны ЕС, призывает, как последствия глобализации требуют, к тому, чтобы учащиеся
осознавали ценность жизни в мультикультурном обществе. Имеется в виду, что это можно
сделать наряду с созданием надежной национальной идентичности в своей собственной
культуре, созданием условий для понимания жизни других народов. Однако важно
спросить, в какой степени эти рекомендации действительно соблюдаются на практике. Цель
этой статьи - дать обзор исследований вопроса существования незападной литературы в
шведской образовательной системе. Обзор показывает, что работа с незападной
художественной литературой проходит не на одинаковом уровне на уроках литературы в
шведской школе, хотя методы преподавания не отличаются от методов для преподавания
западной художественной литературы. Эта работа включает в себя небольшие семинарские
группы, индивидуальный подбор книг, круговой модели и тематическую работу по истории
литературы. Причина того, что незападной художественной литературе уделяется гораздо
меньше времени в учебном плане или места в учебниках, чем западной художественной
литературе, заключается в нехватке времени, недостатке знаний и интереса среди
большинства учителей, а также нехватке ресурсов. Однако, главное общее мнение
большинства учителей состоит в том, что чтение учеников незападной литературы и их
ознакомление культурой других народов является важным фактором в формировании их
личности и мировоззрения, а тадже для слияния разных культур.
Ключевые слова: литература, восток, художественная литература, европоцентризм,
западный канон, постколониализм
Today we live in a world that is increasingly globalized, which is also noticeable in schools.
In the multicultural Sweden, it would be a mistake to withhold students' knowledge of the world
literature. For students to be able to acquire the literature produced in Sweden today, it is necessary
to know literature from different parts of the world from which today's authors have taken their
inspiration. My experience, however, is that literature teaching in the Swedish education system is
limited to Western literature. The publication of the National Agency for Education of Sweden
Grabbing the language - subject didactic perspectives on multilingualism (2012) shows that the
schools’ classrooms are now more multicultural than ever, as about twenty percent of students have
a mother tongue other than Swedish. The pupils in the Swedish school speak a total of about 150
different mother tongues (Skolverket, 2012:7). The teaching in the school must thus be adapted to
meet the cultural diversity that is found in the classrooms. At the same time, the importance of
adapting the teaching to the students' different conditions, experiences, thinking and level of
knowledge is emphasized (Skolverket, 2011:10).
One way to get to know other cultures and cultural heritage is through fiction, which is an
important part of the language/literature subject in the Swedish high school system. Fiction enables
students to get to know their surroundings as well as their fellow human beings and themselves
(Skolverket, 2011: 160). Since the cultural variation in the classrooms is large and the teaching
must be adapted to the students' experiences, variation is required regarding the fiction presented
in the teaching. The Swedish National Agency for Education, like other EU countries, shows how
the consequences of globalization require that people must be able to see the value of living in a
multicultural society, and that this can be done by creating a secure identity in their own culture as
well as creating an understanding of others' living conditions. It is the teacher's task to follow these
guidelines, regardless of which subject she/he teaches. However, it is important to ask to what
extent these guidelines are actually followed in practice. This is an area that is relatively
unexplored, but there is reason to assume that the individual teacher's approach to precisely aspects
such as cultural heritage, values, identity, and cultural diversity affect the extent to which the
global perspective is actualized in the teaching. In the same way, there is reason to assume that the
canon teachers are based on in their teaching is decisive for which literature is used (Elmerson,
2017).
The purpose of this paper is to provide a review on the issue of the existence of what I have
chosen to call non-Western literature in the Swedish educational system.
Carlsson (2008) investigates two municipal high schools in a medium-sized Swedish city.
This study “The presence of non-Western literature in the subject Swedish in two municipal upper
secondary schools” is a qualitative study of six teaching materials and interviews with four teachers
and two librarians. The main question of Carlsson (2008) is whether the students in the surveyed
schools are introduced to non-Western literature and if so, in what way. Fehrman (1999:122) writes
that non-Western literature, with a few exceptions, has been excluded from the literary canon in
the Western countries, but that the Western world's view of Europe and the United States as the center of the world and its literature as superior has begun to be questioned after World War II.
However, the fact that the Western perspective has begun to be questioned does not mean that the
world order has changed. Through the surveyed teaching aids and the interviews with teachers and
librarians, we can see that non-Western literature plays a marginal role in literature teaching at the
two surveyed upper secondary schools in Carlsson (2008). “The male, white and Western canon”,
as Brink (1996) describes it, clearly colors the teaching (Carlsson, 2008:11). Teachers seldom or
never include non-Western literature in their teaching, and libraries contain few non-Western titles.
In the teaching materials, the literature is viewed from a Western perspective. Thus, we can state
that the knowledge that the written word neither originated in Europe nor remained a European
phenomenon is neglected (Carlsson, 2008:40). We have seen that teachers and teaching aids
address the ancient but not the African storytelling tradition or the Mayan literary texts. Latin
American literature is limited to García Márquez and magical realism. Although teaching aids
mean that they address things that have primarily influenced Western and Swedish literature, for
example, Arab poetry in Spain does not receive any recognition, despite the fact that it most likely
influenced Europe's troubadour poetry (40).
Franson (2015) investigates the existence of non-western authorship in textbooks for
Swedish in upper secondary school. The basis of the survey is a pedagogical text analysis, which
is a form of content analysis. The theoretical starting point of this study was mainly Edward Said's
postcolonial theory and Mekkonen Tesfahuney's ideas about a Eurocentric education system. The
importance of an ethnographic approach in school is also part of the theory. Franson (2015) has its
theoretical starting point in postcolonialism. Postcolonialism aims, among other things, to make
visible the historical connections between colonialism and contemporary forms of racism and
ethnic discrimination (De los Reyes, n.d.).
One of the leading figures in the postcolonial field of research is Edward Said. In his work
Orientalism (1978) he argues that there is a distinction between The Western World and the Orient
which in various ways has been created and maintained by The Western World. The "West"
includes Europe and the United States, while Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America
belong to the marginalized "Third World", or "Orient" (Said, 1978:48). Said compares the Orient
with a lion that is described as dangerous and how these notions gain power and are strengthened
even before the visitor encounters this lion. The visitor receives clear instructions on how this lion
should be tamed. When the Westerners came to the Orient, they expected to meet a roaring lion.
Instead, Said explains that "the Orient was quiet and therefore it was possible for Europe to carry
out projects there" (181). Postcolonial theory “seeks to challenge the Western world's dominant
literary and cultural discourses and to critique the discursive and material heritage of
colonialization” (Gustafsson Nadel, 2018, pp. 30-31).
Nayar (2010), who teaches and writes about, among other things, postcolonialism, refers to
Said (1978/2016) who believes that the binary division of East and West has created a power
relationship, where East is constantly in comparison with West. He argues that Orientalism, as a
collective name for countries not considered to belong to the West, "is a form of thinking, talking
about and examining Asian or Arabic cultures that then leads to imperial policies and action" (p.
15). By westerners imposing special characteristics on easterners and lumping together different
groups of people without regard to their differences, a kind of “imaginative geography” is created
(p. 15). This distinction between us and them, the barbaric, non-civilized ones to be studied, creates
distance. Another theorist, Homi K. Bhabha, agrees that this relationship creates power, that the
white man compares himself to the other and at the same time stands over him. However, he adds
that it is only in the comparison, in the presence of the other, that this can happen. No Other - no
superiority in the white: "it is the presence of the brown or black Other that creates the white man's
identity" (Nayar, 2010:26). Once the division of East and West and thus the positions of power
have been established, this power needs to be maintained. "The dominant culture seeks to represent
itself as a unity," writes literature professor Daniels (2001:168). Westerners also want to create a
unity and a heritage, a kind of pan-nationalism. In the need to create dominance, everything else
and "the Other" are pushed aside. Christianity's crusade is one such example. It is not uncommon
at first to resist something completely unknown. "Therefore, different cultures have always wanted
to completely transform each other and perceive the foreign cultures not as they are but as they
should be in order to make it more comfortable for the recipient" (Said, 1978/2016:147).
The image of the Orient as different and less developed than the West has been established
for several centuries, including through observations on voyages of discovery, trade, war and
through literature. Categories such as Oriental and Western have also been used as a starting point
in both analysis, research and public policy, and a special academic discipline around Orientalism
has emerged. Even through colonization, knowledge and ideas about the Orient were passed on,
and the spread of colonization and Orientalism became phenomena that justified each other.
Orientals were considered to be subordinate to the westerners and notions that they were, for
example, gullible and liars spread in that way.
The results of Franson (2015) show that non-Western writings are given varying space in
the various textbooks for the subject Literature at Swedish schools. In the textbook with the largest
proportion of non-Western authors, these make up 22 per cent of the total proportion of authorship,
while the corresponding proportion for the textbook with the least representation is 2.5 per cent.
The didactic points of departure for how the non-Western writings according to the textbooks
should be treated in the teaching also differ. As there are large differences both in terms of content
and didactic points of departure in different textbooks, there is a risk that teaching in schools will
not be equivalent, depending on the extent to which teachers use the textbooks in teaching.
Furthermore, it was claimed that they lacked the ability to realize what was good for them, which
gave the Westerners a mandate to colonize the "Orient" to carry on their customs. Between 1815
and 1914, Europe's direct colonial control expanded from about 35 percent of the earth's surface to
85 percent, and colonization had reached its peak. These factors led to an increase in polarization
and the world was divided into we and them, which meant that the encounters between different
cultures, traditions and societies decreased (Said, 1978:38ff). In this way, the notions that "the
West" and "the Orient" were opposites were strengthened. While "the West" was considered
rational, developed, humane and superior, the "Orient" was described as deviant, undeveloped,
inferior and unable to change and develop (Said, 1978:300).
The notions of Western superiority are something that for a long time has also characterized
Western education systems since they emerged during the Enlightenment. Mekkonen Tesfahuney
(1999) expresses that the Western education system is largely Eurocentric and exclusive, where
"white, male, middle class" is the norm. The idea of how to build an education system originates
from the beginning from major European philosophical works where Europe was presented as the
world's center of knowledge and creativity, while Africa and Asia were described as places where
knowledge and abstract thinking were not present.
One of the most basic features of the Enlightenment was that it arranged both knowledge
and the world in different parts that were set against each other: Europe- the rest of the world, the
self - the Other, civilized - wild, superior-subordinate, and progressive - backward. Europe was
portrayed as the only civilized society while the rest of the world was described as uncivilized.
Through the creation of an education system, the state could not only strengthen the citizens
nationalist feelings of belonging, but also advocate what knowledge would be taught and in what
way, which would enable such ideas to live on. With the help of uniform teaching materials,
regulation of the educations through curricula and standardized systems for grades and assessment,
a common world of ideas was created for those who were part of the education system (Tesfahuney,
1999: 65ff).
The Western education systems, as well as their pedagogy, the content of curricula and the
design of the teaching aids contribute to creating a distinction between one's own culture and "The
Other". There are studies that show that the content of Swedish teaching materials from the 1990s
contains hierarchical rankings of nations, nationalities, and groups. Criticism is also directed at the
fact that the history writing in textbooks is deficient and Eurocentric. In this way, racist and
nationalist currents can be propagated in society, while global power structures that hierarchically
rank both countries and peoples can survive (Tesfahuney, 1999: 65ff).
Franson (2015) concludes that in order to define non-Western authorship, the starting point
is the opposite, that is, identifying what belongs to the West (30). According to the Swedish
National Encyclopedia, Europe and the western hemisphere belong to the West. Non-Western
authorship in the Western essays thus refers to authors who were not born in Europe, North
America or Australia. Russian authors are seen as Europeans in them, but not always belonging to
the Western literature.
According to the Swedish National Encyclopedia, the canon consists of a collection of texts
and documents that are in some way considered normative. Already in late antiquity, lists were
drawn up of authors who were considered role models in the creation of literature. Nowadays, the
term canon refers to the selection of literary works that are read in schools at a certain time and are
the subject of research. The selection of which texts are considered canonical "depends on the
values of the time and is assumed to characterize the norms and literary perception of new
generations" (Dalén & Reimers, n.d.). For this reason, canon formation is constantly the subject of
debate and research, not least in the education system (Franson, 2015:15). The term canon is
defined by Bergsten and Elleström (2004) as something that "consists of the literary works which,
independent of the personal likes and tastes of individual readers and researchers, are considered
to constitute the indispensable legacy that each new generation of education seekers has to acquire
and pass on" (Elmerson 2017: 31).
One of the proponents of the existence of the Western canon is the literary scholar Harold
Bloom. In his work The Western Canon (2000) he has listed 26 authors who he claims form the
backbone of the Western canon: Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Montaigne, Molière,
Milton, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Wordsworth, Austen, Whitman, Dickinson, Dickens, George
Eliot, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Freud, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Borges, Neruda, Pessoa, and Beckett.
Bloom's arguments for the selection of authors in the literary canon have, among other things, to
do with the desire to safeguard a cultural heritage, quality and tradition (Bloom, 2000, passim) in
Franson (2015:16). In Kanon och Tradition, Lars Brink (2006) also problematizes the concept of
canon. He emphasizes that what is typical of a canon is that it includes influential literature from
different eras (21). In other words, it is the literature that is believed to have influenced us most
through history that is being canonized. Brink also explains how it has long been important for
different countries to establish their own literary canon, depending on the nationalist currents in
Europe during the late 19th century and a bit into the 20th century. Sweden also wanted to
strengthen the national identity and part of this was to establish, as in other countries, a national
canon that would form the backbone of school education (Elmerson 2017:31).
Results in Franson (2015) show that the surveyed textbooks introduce a total of 1006
authorships, of which 186 are non-Western. This means that non-Western writings make up 18.5
per cent of the total number of presented writings. Of the 186 non-Western writings introduced, 52
per cent are men and 32 per cent women. The proportion of texts or authorship where the author's
gender does not appear amounts to 16 percent (23). Non-Western writings from different parts of
the world are represented in the textbooks. The majority of the non-Western writings presented are
from Asia and the Middle East. South America and Africa are represented to a lesser extent and
together are represented by about as many authors as the previous areas, respectively. Writers from
the Middle East and Asia are generally given the greatest representation of non-Western writings,
while writing from Africa is given the least space. The Persian story collection A Thousand and
One Nights and the poet Hafiz are the writings that appear in all the textbooks examined, while it
otherwise varies which writings are found in the textbooks. To some extent, however, the content
between the two anthologies and the two textbooks that focus on literary history correspond.
Salman Rushdie, Anita Nair, Zhou Weihu and Haruki Murakami are examples of other writers
representing Asia. The Middle East is represented by Khaled Hosseini, Mahmud Darwish, Amos
Oz and Nawal El Saadawi, among others. The Middle East is the area that is most represented
among non-Western writings, as the proportion of authors who come from there amounts to just
under 50 percent. Aziz Nesin, Forough Farrokhzad, Suheir Hammad, Navar El Saadawi and Orhan
Pamuk are examples of Middle Eastern authorship in the textbook. The literary history textbooks,
however, present more non-Western writings than the associated anthologies do. The textbooks
also differ in terms of the literary eras in which non-Western writings are present. Two of the
textbooks present only non-Western writings from the Middle Ages, while in a textbook nonWestern writing are found in connection with all epochs, although the emphasis is on the Post-War
period and the present. This also applies to the fourth textbook, which, however, does not present
non-Western authorship in connection with all epochs (Franson, 2015:31). Turkey's representative
Yasar Kemal, who lived, among other places, due to exile, in Sweden, gets space in the textbook.
Four titles by him are mentioned, one of which is described in more detail (Carlson, 2008: 16).
Jansson (2002) writes that the spread of Kemal's books is mainly due to translations and wandering
troubadours who are said to be the source of why his books became so popular in Turkey then as
well illiterates have been able to read the stories (63).
The results in Elmerson (2017) show that teachers' opinions are divided, with half of them
saying that today's global society is something that affects how they conduct their teaching and
select their material, while the remaining two believe that it has not yet affected them, but that will
happen in the future. Globalization has resulted in today's society being much more multicultural
than it used to be, which also applies in the classroom, as students today are constantly in contact
with other cultures. Although the results show that the interviewed teachers can see this connection,
they also have divided views here on how it affects their teaching. Where one teacher believes that
a multicultural classroom leads to interesting, spontaneous discussions due to students' different
cultural backgrounds, another believes that students have similar experiences and interests
regardless of cultural background. School canon is something that all of the teachers fall back on
in their reasoning and use in teaching, where they emphasize the importance of students, Swedishborn as well as newcomers, through the literature to get in touch with Western culture. The teachers
also express that the use of school canons and central works is done out of habit. The results show
a direct criticism of the Swedish school canon, where two of the teachers believe that it should
make room for more non-Western works in order to be able to include these in the teaching, and
for all students to benefit (cf. Brink 2006, p.28 & Bergsten and Ellerström 2004, p.41ff).
The core of the Literature subject in the Swedish upper secondary school is language and
literature. Literature studies thus have a prominent role in the Swedish subject in upper secondary
school. The studies are attributed, and have historically been attributed, the power to be a tool in
the school's influence on societal challenges and aspirations. During the 19th century, literature
studies in schools were considered important for the formation of a national identity. Today,
researchers believe that there is a belief in literature as a tool for promoting integration and a
multicultural society (Myrseth 2014). Granstedt (2010) has investigated how teachers handle
multiculturalism in school practice. She has noted that from a teacher's point of view, there tends
to be an emphasis on students' differences, i.e., a visualization of differences. That, Granstedt says,
creates differences that are placed at the center of attention. She expresses that a possible
consequence of this is the construction of the other, which is then made into something subordinate
to the ordinary. Magnus Persson also believes that cultures are divided and hierarchized in school
(Myrseth 2014: 82). He believes that cultures are sorted into high and low, fine and ugly, the
ordinary and that which is different. He believes that “minority cultures in an identity-political
discourse function as a struggle against the majority culture” (83). One can interpret Persson as
meaning that it can, for example, be about structures in terms of upper secondary school literature
studies (Myrseth 2014:18).
The concept of majority culture is linked to a majority perspective, which means that
interpretations and priorities take place through the perspective of a dominant group. According to
Granstedt, there is a risk that someone who is not included in the majority will be constructed for
the other (Myrseth, 2014:10). Magnus Persson believes that the construction of us and them is
included in the very concept of culture. He believes that the concept presupposes demarcation and
the establishment of hierarchical orders. According to Persson, this also applies in attempts to
emphasize cultural diversity as something positive. In this way, boundaries are created between
our cultural heritage and the cultural heritage of others (10).
The results in Myrseth (2014) show that there is a great emphasis on Western literature in
teaching materials. Of the 18 books examined, only three claims to cover Western literature and
Western culture on the cover or in the preface. Two of these Western-oriented textbooks
simultaneously pretend to be “comprehensive”, something that can be understood as pretending to
be a comprehensive description of the subject area literature. The remaining 15 textbooks included
in the study pretend to deal with "world literature", "foreign authorship" or literature in general.BUTA. İnternational Journal of Scientific Research. № 2/1 2021
İSSN: 2717-7661 butadergisi.com
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They thus pretend to offer the cultural variation that is expressed in the syllabus for Swedish 1 and
Swedish 2 (the courses taught at the upper secondary school). At the same time, all the teaching
materials examined show a Western dominance and clearly limited cultural variation. An
illustrative example is that one of the books pretends to contain the classics of world literature.
However, only 8 of 116 texts in the same textbook, can be considered to have been written by nonEuropean authors. Two of these, A Thousand and One Nights and the poem The Rose and the
Nightingale, are written by non-Western writers.
Mohell (2020), “East meets west in the classroom. Three Swedish teachers' attitudes to and
experiences of non-Western fiction in teaching at upper secondary school”, investigates Swedish
teachers' attitudes to and experiences of non-Western fiction in teaching in upper secondary school.
Both previous research and this study have been based on postcolonial theory. Qualitative
interviews with three upper secondary school teachers in Stockholm with different experiences
have been conducted. As all interview candidates have the same position regarding non-Western
literature, this affects the results of the survey. The theoretical starting point in the thesis is
postcolonial theory and its impact on literature teaching. Western literature and culture, which is
part of the so-called whiteness norm, has become the standard, while everything else is exotified
and the Western tradition is prioritized in literature teaching. The thesis is thus that teachers are
colored by their own experiences, such as education and contact with other cultures, and student
groups in their choice of literature (2020: 4) The ideology of imperialism forms the basis of
colonialism, where it is believed that one's own nation is entitled to conquer and rule another
country for its own gain. This in turn is based on the belief (and a hope) that there would be
scientific evidence for racial theory and a hierarchy within it, that the colonizers are superior and
thus justify their power over others. To better understand how the Western world has established
power and maintained it, we can study the historical aspect to begin with (Mohell, 2020: 5).
Making visible how the Orient and other parts of the world are portrayed in Western texts
is an important aspect of literature teaching. Nayar writes: “interactions with natives were mediated
by and shot through with the ‘knowledge’, prejudices and stereotypes they had acquired through
the Orientalist texts. Thus, texts constructed their very experience of the reality of the Orient”
(2010: 18). Literature should, according to Nayar, be read critically to give a fairer picture of
different cultures, create perspectives and opportunities for identification. Tenngart sums it up as
follows: “The study of the colonialism of older texts can open our eyes to lingering colonialist
elements in our contemporary literature.… Word choice, formulations and determinations tend to
survive, long after their ideological backgrounds have rejected as obsolete” (2008:137).
Imperialism and colonialism belong to outdated ideologies, but since they are part of our history
and continue to permeate our fiction, we do well to draw students' attention to it in literature
teaching (Mohell, 2020: 8).
In Mohell’s study, both concepts of overseas and non-Western literature are used. The
distinction between them is that Western literature still belongs to the overseas literature, but to the
non-Western continents Africa, Asia and South America. The reason why both are included is
because the interviewed teachers use these concepts alternately. The results of the survey and
previous research show that the interviewed candidates all agreed that non-Western literature is
given too little space in teaching despite its relevance and positive impact on students.
To sum up, review shows that the work with non-Western fiction takes place in different
ways in Literature classes at the Swedish school, but it does not differ from the reading of Western
fiction. This work includes smaller seminar-like groups, individual book selection, theme work
according to the circle model and literary history. The reason why non-western fiction does not get
the same space as other fiction is due to lack of time, lack of knowledge and interest among many
teachers and lack of resources. The main common denominator of all three interview candidates is
that the recognition factor in students is important in reading. Teachers agree that by reading about
different cultures and human destinies in non-Western literature, students both get the opportunity
to connect to something while expanding their knowledge. In addition to this, they believe that
non-Western literature has a lot to offer but that it can be a challenge to include it in the planning.
This is consistent with previous research which shows that teachers have a pronounced desire to
read more world literature but nevertheless do not spend much time on it in the classroom. The
interview candidates' approach to the inclusion of non-Western literature differed quite a bit. That
students should read non-Western literature, all three thought in many ways was a non-issue, it was
more about how and when. All three emphasized that it is important for students to know their
surroundings and conveyed it in different ways.
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