SOURCE: Andersen, Frank Egholm, and John Weinstock. “Danish Literary Criticism since 1960.” In The Nordic Mind: Current Trends in Scandinavian Literary Criticism, pp. 1-5. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986.

In the following essay, Andersen presents a brief synopsis of Danish literary critical thought.

It has been extremely exciting to follow Danish literary criticism and research during the last two decades. Denmark is a very small country but nevertheless has a culture and a language all its own. Exactly because of this limitation in size, Danish cultural and literary debates are notably sensitive to what is happening in other, larger cultural areas: German, French, English, and American cultural trends are absorbed quickly into the Danish cultural environment. Sometimes this sensitivity causes Danish culture to be more French than the cultural debate in France, sometimes more American than that in America, but some pronounced Danish traditions are always present to...