Online Sociality and Literary Representation: Tracing Modern Friendship

The project pursues a qualitative and comparative analysis of a range of literary texts. More specifically, I will assemble a collection of Anglophone and Danish contemporary novels, short stories, and poetry collections that depict online sociality with the aim of offering analyses that have international relevance, as well as local significance. More specifically, I will investigate texts by Sally Rooney (Normal People, Beautiful World Where are Thou), Tao Lin (Taipei, Selected Tweets), Patricia Lockwood (No One is Talking About This), Caspar Eric (7/11, Nye Balancer, Vi Kan Gøre Meget), Anna Juul (Penge og Bacon), and Maria Gerhardt (Der Bor Hollywwodstjerner på Vejen, Transfervindue – Historier om de Raskes Fejl). My theoretical endeavors will develop in continuous dialogue with philosophical research into the nature of friendship, as well as literary theory focused on the social dimensions of literary texts. To ensure clarity, I will limit my research to examples of Danish and Anglophone literature from the past fifteen years and define social media as websites and apps that facilitate communication, networking, user-input, and sharing of content.