Prize recipient 2023 | Anne-Marie Mai

What is your research about?

I research literary history and uses of literature. I’ve worked on Danish and Nordic literature, but also American poetry. I’m keen to challenge literary research and try new approaches. I’ve written a history of Danish literature in three volumes where I used “place” as a new point of departure. I looked at where literature has been written, printed, communicated and read, and I went from churches, rectories and manor houses to salons, newspapers, universities and the Internet. 

I’m also very interested in how literature has been used and can be used. This has led to me working with welfare researchers and medical professionals, among others. My interest here has been in how literature and art have been and remain an important element of our approach to welfare in Denmark, and I’ve cofounded the discipline of narrative medicine in a Danish context. We’re working here on how reading literature can help medical professionals to get better at listening to patients.

What are the challenges and prospects for your research?

My research has a number of different strands, and it might be hard from the outside to see how Danish literary history, narrative medicine and researching American beat poetry and Bob Dylan fit together. For me, though, it’s rewarding to move around between these different fields – it’s a universe with some surprising common themes. I hope that my research can help enhance understanding of our cultural heritage and pass it on to new generations.

It’s difficult to source research funding in the humanities, not least for literary research, so that has been a very concrete challenge throughout my professional life. When very young, I was lucky enough to receive a grant from Møllerens Fond to research Nordic women’s literature together with researchers across the Nordic region. This encouragement helped me a lot. I also gained an early foothold in an inspiring academic environment at the University of Southern Denmark. I began as an external lecturer with two hours of teaching a week – it could hardly have been any less, but it was a good start.

How did you become interested in your research field?

I loved Danish lessons at school – I loved to examine texts closely and discuss literature with my class. So I was in no doubt that I wanted to study literature at university. My father, though, recommended that I study to be a pharmacist. He thought this was an exciting profession with good job opportunities. But both he and my mother had a love of literature themselves, so they supported me in my choice. It would certainly have amused my father to learn that last year I was teaching pharmacists how they can make use of literature! 

The historical side of my research has to do with my love of old books, frail manuscripts and exciting literary places. I love to visit Maribo Abbey where Leonora Christina Ulfeldt lived, Bakkehuset’s literary salons in Copenhagen, N.F.S. Grundtvig’s home in Udby, Hans Christian Andersen’s house in Odense and Karen Blixen’s home, Rungstedlund – my husband likes to tease me that whenever I see a sign saying “museum”, there’s no way we won’t be going in! This year, I’ve been in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s a large Bob Dylan archive – a real treasure chest where I could happily spend hours.

What are the greatest insights or discoveries you have made?

My literary research has put me on the track of a number of women who have been overlooked in the writing of literary history. It’s been important for me to highlight the artistic value and significance of works by Dorothea Biehl, Thomasine Gyllembourg, Thit Jensen, Karin Michaëlis and Tove Ditlevsen, among others. I’ve also drawn attention to the way a new literary period began in Danish literature in the mid-1960s. 

I’ve tried to show there was a widespread break with the modernism that then predominated, called the “formal breakthrough”, to which Anders Bodelsen, Dan Turèll, Kirsten Thorup, Peter Laugesen, Charlotte Strandgaard, Suzanne Brøgger, Jytte Rex, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Klaus Høeck and Henrik Nordbrandt have all contributed. The formal breakthrough has links to international literary movements, including American beat poetry. Another priority for me has been to show the poetic qualities of Bob Dylan’s lyrics, so it was very special for me when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016.

What does it mean to you to win the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize?

The Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize gives me a unique opportunity to pursue some of the research questions that matter most to me. I want to look more closely at two in particular. First, I want to explore how Hans Christian Andersen is portrayed as a poet in recent Danish literature. Danish authors have been providing new interpretations of Andersen as poet and author in recent years. Kim Fupz Aakeson has written an innovative biography – what picture does it paint of the poet? And Harald Voetmann has reimagined Andersen’s debut and interpreted him as a gentle hero, a special character, which we needed here in Denmark during the difficult Covid years. 

Second, I want to look more closely at Denmark’s reception of Bob Dylan. There are all kinds of interesting bits and bobs tucked away in the Dylan archives. When I was in Tulsa, I met an American who showed me photos he’d taken as a 16-year-old at Dylan’s first Danish concert in 1966. These were really interesting, because they show a Danish audience listening intently when Dylan went electric, which contrasts with the British crowd, who booed loudly during the electric part of his concert.

Tell us about your background, family and leisure interests

I was born and raised in Aarhus. My father was an accounts manager at engineering company Sabroe, and my mother was a nurse. The two met when my father was ill with tuberculosis and my mother was doing her nursing training. My father spent his long stay in hospital reading most of world literature, and my mother would read during quiet periods on night duty, so books and literature were an important part of my childhood. My mother would take me to the library from a very early age, and I was fascinated by the fact that you could choose and take home as many books as you could carry.

I finished my schooling at Marselisborg Gymnasium and would visit museums and the theatre with my best friend. We’d go on really long walks in the woods around Marselisborg, drink gallons of tea and talk about all the big existential questions. Unfortunately, she was taken from us too early, and I miss her every day. I married the poet Klaus Høeck in 1985 and moved to Copenhagen.

Klaus and I bought a cheap house in Røsnæs, where I got a job running evening classes while also producing literary programmes for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. I then got the job at the University of Southern Denmark, and we moved to northern Funen, where we’ve lived since 1989. I combine a busy working life with looking after my garden, taking long walks in the woods, dipping in the sea in summer, and visiting the theatre and museums.