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
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“Carlyle, to adopt his own classification, is himself the hero as literary man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)