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ENCOUNTER WITH HISTORICAL FOLKLORE
Cultural identities are constructed and negotiated in social action both through social experience and through discourse. Utilizing both narrative analysis and postmodern theories of gender and identity construction, this study concerns the cultural construction of gender and the process through which gender identity was constructed in premodern Sweden, particularly in the narrative performance of erotic tales.1
Voluminous collections of erotica from medieval times onwards have been stored in European and American archives.2 Folkloristic interest in these existing collections and in collecting more erotic folklore was stimulated by Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytical school at the end of the nineteenth century. Although some erotica has been published in special journals and books, the main body of the material is still not available in print, principally because the double standard concerning sexuality for a long time restricted the use of the collections. On the one hand, it was considered urgent and legitimate to collect erotic folklore; on the other hand, it could not be printed either in anthologies or in scientific publications.3 The Scandinavian collections are modest in size compared to other countries and were brought together mainly during the first half of the twentieth century. I have thoroughly analyzed approximately one hundred texts collected from oral tradition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.4
GENDER AND EROTIC NARRATIVE
Erotic narrative is a discourse representing gender issues in sexual relationships. The narratives humorously relate sexual interactions between men and women in rural settings. The texts are outspoken; they directly describe sexual actions and use sexually charged language. The protagonists represent the most typical social, generational, and gender roles of old peasant society - the young unmarried maid, the farmhand, the journeyman, the peasant and his wife, and the old peasant couple. In the poetic versions of the narratives, male and female organs sometimes substitute for the actors themselves.
The primary context of erotic narratives is preindustrial Swedish society. Until the end of nineteenth century, most Swedes lived in the countryside and earned their living by agriculture. The political and cultural ideology was patriarchal, and it is within this frame that the erotic narratives were produced and reproduced.
The main goal of my study is to illuminate how erotic narrative has contributed...