Martin Anderson Nexo's Novel "Pelle, the Conqueror". A Marxist Perspective (PDF)

Scientific Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Literature - Scandinavia and Iceland, , language: English, abstract: The purpose of this research paper is to conduct a textual analysis of this novel, as a research method on the bedrock of Marxist literary hermeneutics in an innovative and new way, tracing the all-round development of Pelle's personality who succeeded to organise his fellow-proletarians on the platform of the Corporative movement, trade union and socialist revolutionary movement. He founded the garden-city for the betterment of his fellow-proletarian comrades.

Martin Andersen Nexo was the most eminent Danish Marxist proletarian fiction writer of the twentieth century. He came from the working-class family background and wrote short stories, novels and essays about the plights and sufferings of the proletariat class. His novel "Pelle, the Conqueror" (1906) is one of the greatest proletariat novels in world literature. Pelle, the protagonist of the novel emerged as the self-realised and class-conscious proletarian leader from the obscurity, drudgery and poverty of his rural peasant and shepherd background. He was a common labouring lad, who served as a herd, shoemaker's apprentice and qualified shoemaker.

The novel enjoyed enormous success and popularity that conquered the hearts of the proletarians and peasants of the world. The novel is also neglected in academia, criticism, literature and the world of research.