Vejret i ‘Mogens’

Dan Ringgaard: “Weather in ‘Mogens’”The study of climate in literature must consider the significance of surroundings in general and of the weather more specifically. But it must also orient itself in the opposite direction and investigate the morphological and epistemological figures that meteorology offers to literary studies. On the one hand we must turn our attention toward the problem of climate change by way of literature, on the other we must develop ways to understand the workings of discrete phenomena – such as weather, air or atmosphere – in texts. This article primarily deals with the latter, first by introducing and discussing theories of weather and weather-related theories (Michel Serres, Jane Bennett, Tim Ingold), and secondly through a close reading of the opening of J. P. Jacobsen’s short story “Mogens” in which the weather is regarded as an actor in the text.