JARRICK, Arne 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born 1952; married; children: four.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Kräftriket Hus 7 and Department of History, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail—[email protected]; and [email protected].

CAREER:

Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, professor of history.

MEMBER:

Swedish Research Council, Council of Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences.

WRITINGS:

Psykologisk Socialhistoria, Almqvist & Wiksell (Stockholm, Sweden), 1985.

Den Himelske Älskaren: Herrnhutisk Väckelse, Vantro Och Sekularisering: 1700-Talets Sverige, Ordront (Stockholm, Sweden), 1987.

Mot det Moderna Förnuftet: Johan Hjerpe och Andra Småborgare i Upplysningstidens Stockholm, Tidens (Stockholm, Sweden), 1992, translation published as Back to Modern Reason: Johan Hjerpe and Other Petit Bourgeois in Stockholm in the Age of Enlightenment, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 1999.

(With Hans Andersson and Johan Söderberg) Människovärdet och Makten: Om Civiliseringsprocessen i Stockholm, 1600-1850, Kommitten för Stockholmsforskning (Stockholm, Sweden), 1994.

Kärlekens Makt och Tårar: En Evig Historia (title means "Love's Power and Tears: An Eternal History"), Norstedt (Stockholm, Sweden), 1997.

(With Johan Söderberg) Odygd och Vanära: Folk och Brott i Gamla Stockholm, Rabén Prisma (Stockholm, Sweden), 1998.

Only Human: Studies in the History of the Conceptions of Man, Almqvist & Wiksell (Stockholm, Sweden), 2000.

Hamlets Fråga. En Svensk Självmordshistoria (title means "Hamlet's Question: A Swedish History of Suicide"), Norstedts (Stockholm, Sweden), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Arne Jarrick, a professor of history and a philosopher, describes his field as "the history of mentalities." He has written on the Swedish enlightenment, social conditions in Stockholm, and the different views of suicide in Sweden's history. While his works focus on the specific experience of Sweden, they have much to tell anyone interested in the intellectual history of Europe and have attracted an international readership.

His Kärlekens Makt och Tårar: En Evig Historia ("Love's Power and Tears: An Eternal History") is a wide-ranging study of the ways in which Swedish poets, theologians, and philosophers have approached women's sexuality. The book ranges from Medieval fears of lusty women inspired by Satan, to more gentle views of sex as God-given, promoted among others by the Moravian Brotherhood. Jarrick also explores the curious philosophical views of female sexuality, seen first as a perversion of male sexuality and only later as separate and equally valid, opening an equally strange debate as to whether women had any sexual feelings. At the same time, he delves into the often dramatic differences between theory and practice, and between the philosophers and the common people. "A delightful aspect of Jarrick's study is his foray into popular writing. A section on songs of love and death provides an excursion through chapbook literature with stress on its polysemy and ambiguity," noted American Historical Review contributor David Ransel.

In Only Human: Studies in the History of Conceptions of Man, Jarrick brings together a series of English-language essays on an even vaster subject, the different conceptions of the human condition from the Reformation to the late 1800s. "Unlike many collections of essays, this particular volume attains considerable unity of purpose partly because of the Swedish focus, and the resulting common ideological unity underpinning most of the source material," explained American Historical Review contributor Thomas Munck. Again, the specifically Swedish context provides ample opportunity to explore universal issues in Western history, including changing attitudes toward childhood, gender, criminality, and suicide, and the impact of religion, mercantilism, and Enlightenment philosophy on these complex issues. The various authors draw on a wide range of publications, from philosophical treatises to popular newspapers. Jarrick himself contributes an essay on changing attitudes toward suicide, a subject he would expound upon in his next book.

In Hamlets Fråga. En Svensk Självmordshistoria ("Hamlet's Question: A Swedish History of Suicide"), Jarrick draws on sermons and court cases, and his own struggles with suicidal thoughts, to trace the complicated historical attitudes toward a deeply personal act that at the same time was officially a crime and a terrible sin. For Swedish authorities, determining whether a person who committed suicide could be buried in sacred ground or had to be taken out to the woods like an animal, motive was supremely important. Melancholy or "feeblemindedness" could be mitigating factors, but despair, which meant a loss of faith in God's mercy, condemned the soul to hell and the body to a disgraceful burial. Jarrick argues that the act of suicide is a kind of accusation against society, transferring personal shame to the community at large and giving suicide a cultural impact that far outweighs the number of actual suicides. "If ultimately speculative, Jarrick's argument is nevertheless absorbing, and in the course of making it, he takes the reader on one instructive excursion after another," observed Ransel in the American Historical Review.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 1998, David Ransel, review of Kärlekens Makt och Tårar: En Evig Historia, pp. 913-914; December, 2001, Thomas Munck, review of Only Human: Studies in the History of the Conceptions of Man, pp. 1886-1887; June, 2001, David Ransel, review of Hamlets Fråga. En Svensk Självmordshistoria, pp. 1062-1063.