Americanism, Popular Culture and the Primitive: Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Madame D'Ora (1904)

Abstract

Johannes V. Jensen's novels Madame D'Ora (1904) and Hjulet (The Wheel, 1905) represented some of the most popular works of early twentieth-century Americanist fiction in Europe. Taking Jensen's first novel, Madame D'Ora, as my focus, I show how his work participated in an ambivalent construction of America as an imaginary space of both danger and cultural renewal, one that combined the modern (technology) with a dangerous, ‘atavistic’ influence. Through an investigation of Jensen's use of tropes of primitivity, in particular, I argue that such literary Americanism in fact represented an effort to work through changes taking place within Europe itself. Specifically, Madame D'Ora deals with the rise of new forms of mass culture and popular entertainment – such as the cinema – and their effect on traditional European intellectuals. Within this context, Jensen represents the new ‘American’ forms of technology and popular culture both as a hope for overcoming European decadence and as a dangerous form of cultural and psychic primitivization.