Arne Garborg (1851-1924
Norwegian writer of the naturalistic school. He founded the weekly Fedraheim
(1877), in which he urged reforms in many spheres-political, social,
religious, agrarian, and linguistic. Garborg championed the use of
Nynorsk, New Norwegian, which is based on rural dialects, as a literary
language; he translated the Odyssey into it. Several of his
early novels presented male views in the debate on sexual morality
conduted throughout the 1880s. Two outstanding novels, Tired Men (1891) and Peace (1892, tr. 1929), relate the tragic disintegration of morally bankrupt and guilt-ridden men |