Jaktslottet och Törnrosens bok: paratopi och scenografi hos C. J. L. Almqvist

The Book of the Wild Rose is Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s (1793–1866) masterpiece. The two different editions of this ”book” cover most of his literary career, from the early 1830’s to his hasty departure from Sweden in 1851. The elaborate use of a frame fiction, which confers a self-reflecting metafictional quality to the whole, allows the author to collect a large part of his writings. The fascinating and elusive personality of Almqvist as a writer seems to vanish behind the extreme variety and richness of his work. My aim is to present a reading inspired by the literary discourse analysis of French pragmatic linguist Dominique Maingueneau, which focuses on the frame fiction in The Book of the Wild Rose in order to show the presence of the author facing the reader in different ways in the text.