Knut Hamsun’s (1859 –1952)

is one of the most remarkable experiments in 19th Century prose. Begun in the wake of a return to Copenhagen from America and finished in Kristiania (now Oslo), Hamsun’s most widely read novel is concerned with “the strange and peculiar life of the mind, the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body” (Letters 1, 118). The first fragment, published anonymously in the Copenhagen journal

(New Earth) in November 1888, reveals a reorientation of Hamsun’s thinking that takes shape in a new commitment to “reveal oneself nakedly” (Hamsun qtd. Ferguson 101). Though the fragment, later reworked as the second part of

, shares many of the characteristic concerns (or generalisations) that will come to define literary modernism, its style…

1843 words

Citation: Stables, Wayne. "Sult". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 February 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24881, accessed 26 November 2024.]