”Strängt taget fattas oss ingenting”: Folkhemmet i Stig Sjödins och Jenny Wrangborgs arbetarlyrik

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyze the attitudes of two prominent Swedish working-class poets – Stig Sjödin (1917–1993) and Jenny Wrangborg (born 1984) – toward the social-democratic welfare state. The premise of the analysis is that this welfare state is a historical and changing phenomenon that has attracted attention from working-class writers in different ways at different times. Sjödin wrote during the emergence and the heyday of the social-democratic welfare state, whereas Wrangborg is writing poetry at a time when the labour movement is ailing and the welfare state challenged. Thus, despite the two poets having closely aligned aesthetical and ideological ideals, their attitudes toward the welfare state are distinctly different.