User:Mareklug/Martin Allwood

Martin S. Allwood (13 April, 1916 – 16 January, 1999) was a Swedish man of letters, educator, translator, folklorist and a poet in his own right. His translation of Nordic literature poetry into English is canonical in the United States.

Education

Martin Allwood received his primary education in Sweden. From 1935 to 1939, he was a student at the university of Cambridge, England, where he received a double first degree (B.A) in literature and psychology. After the second world war, he studied at Columbia and later in Germany. His doctoral thesis was about the leisure time of the population in a bombed city (Darmstadt, Germany).

In 1939 he was in India. From that time he continued with his interest in India for the rest of his life. Among other things, he translated several Indian poets to Swedish and wrote a book about India in 1942.

Scholarly accomplishments

In the years 1942-43, he was the first person in Sweden to conduct a holistic sociological-anthropological investigation of a small community. 1943 he published his study under the title ”Medelby” (Middle Village).

During the early 1940s, in his book Läsare bedömer litteratur (English: Readers judge literature), he was the first person to introduce I. A. Richards’ ”new criticism” into literary studies in Sweden. During the same period, he was engaged in developing new methods for language teaching at the language school, Marston Hill, founded by his father, Charles Allwood, in Mullsjö, Sweden. He published the book ”Levande språkundervisning” (Living language teaching”, where he collected the educational expertise of the 1940:s and introduced new methods which are still important for language teaching in Sweden.

In the 1950s, he started a private educational academy in Mullsjö, with seminars on psychology, sociology and music. In conjunction with this, he conducted the first study of comics, ”Kalle Anka, Stålmannen och vi” (Donald Duck, Superman and we).

Views for Sweden in Europe

He was one of the first enthusiasts in Sweden for a united Europe. In the beginning of the 1950s, he organized a European week every summer in Mullsjö. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, he arranged the sociology program Three ways of life for American (USA) students. The program gave American students a chance to learn about and to travel to Sweden and to the Soviet Union, through arranged study visits and contacts with business and schools, as well as with local and national administrative offices.

Academic career in the United States and summer work in Sweden

Until the late 1960s, he was a professor in the USA, while in the summer being responsible for English courses at the Anglo-American Center in Mullsjö, where Scandinavian young people learned English. The summer courses continued until 1991.

Cancer and remaining in Sweden

1969 he found out that he had cancer. After some years of struggle, he was cured and decided to stay in Sweden. He writes about his experiences during his illness in his book JJag bar döden i min kropp (English: I carried death in my body), which has been translated into at least 13 languages.

Other accomplishments, translation of nordic poetry

Martin Allwood was also the founder of the Authors’ Society of Göteborg (English: Gothenburg) and one of the founders of the Authors’ Society of Sweden (1974).

He was a very productive author, and had written in Swedish and English (as well as several minor publications in German and French), and has had works translated into many other languages. In addition, he was himself a very productive translator.

Mostly, he translated Scandinavian poetry to English, in particular Norwegian. Among his publications is the canonical Modern Scandinavian Poetry 1900-1980, which was published 1982, and still functions as a standard reference in the United States.

Own poems

A selection of his extensive poetic contributions can be found in “Selected Swedish poetry”, in two parts, published 1982-1987.

Notes on bibliography

The publications of Martin Allwood have been presented in many countries. In Sweden, the most complete overview has been given by Helmer Lång in the book “Four Swedish Europeans” (1976).

A bibliography of Martin Allwood’s publications can be found at

• http://www.immi.se/kultur/allwood

Works

Source

• Modern Scandinavian poetry
• Scandinavian songs and ballads: Modern Swedish, Danish and Norwegian songs
• Jag minns det vackra Mullsjö : 230 konstnärer och en ort i deras liv
• Basic Swedish Word List
• 20th Century Scandinavian Poetry: The Development of Poetry in Iceland
• Katedralernas kyrkogård : fria dikter
• Engelska vokabler och idiom med viktigare amerikanska varianter
• Den västerländska civilisationens rötter : en läsebok för dem som
• Livets träd : sex, kärlek och personligheten i det samtida medvetandet
• Essays: On contemporary civilization
• More snapshots of more or less famous people
• English and American songs
• Bildande konst : dikter = Liberal arts : poems
• Splittring och enhet : dikter
• Amerika-Svensk Lyrik genom 100 ar
• Ryska kulturmönster : kulturmönster, sexualitet och personlighet
• Odelbar värld : dikter
• Love Must Speak
• Automaten blöder : noveller
• A new English anthology : with biographical notes in English
• Valda svenska dikter. D. 2, 1965-1986
• Indien : en kort framställning av land, folk, näringsliv
• Läsare bedömer litteratur