Kalevalaiset sankarit nykymaailman menossa : tutkimus Johanna Sinisalon romaanista Sankarit

In the image conveyed by folklore, we encounter characters from the early primitive worldview, heroes with special powers from the beyond. These mythological figures, transplanted from folklore, are used in (modern) literature to create additional meanings for the narrative and the characters. In this work, I explore the cultural and political meanings that arise when Kalevala characters are transplanted into the contemporary landscape. The focus of the research is on the characters in Johanna Sinisalo's novel Sankarit (2003). In her novel, Sinisalo describes the cultural differences of the present day by referring to Kalevala characters from Finnish national mythology. This juxtaposition necessarily creates strange characters and environments in which the often caricatured characters move, raising the question of parody.
The central research question is what kind of cultural and also political meanings emerge in this intertextual setting and what literary means are used to produce them in Sankarit. My research questions are situated on two levels. The first level is the level of character description, where I examine how the characters have been transferred from Kalevala to the Heroes and what new meanings have resulted from this transfer. The second level is the broader level of more general cultural discourses, where I examine the cultural representations and institutional meanings of the displacement of characters.
The approach of my research is therefore both structural and thematic. On the one hand, I examine the novel in a structural way, that is, how Sinisalo embeds different literary genres in her narrative, or how the stories of different characters take on the characteristics of different genres. On the other hand, I examine themes related to the novel's broader cultural discourses, including how the characters are positioned in relation to debates about changing gender roles and the formation and construction of identity.