Literary Significance and Criticism
Kristin Lavransdatter was notable and to some extent controversial in its time, for its explicit characterization of sex in general and female sexuality in particular; and its treatment of morally ambiguous situations.
It was the main basis for Undset being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Read more about this topic: Kristin Lavransdatter
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“Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)