458 them the necessary distinction to call themselves representatives of interna- tional opinion and modernism. Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the power struggle in the field of culture are applied to these events. He who has „distinction“ and „symbolic capital“ can demand power in the „field“ in which he participates, where a certain decided habitus is legitimate and the power elite decide the orthodoxy; the rules of the game are unwritten but known by those on the field. Challengers can provoke the power holders with their own heterodox opinions. At the outset of their careers, the Modernists at Birtingur had been criticized for not composing anything important, for being sentimental, egocentric and lacking ideals — criticisms that were usually brought against the poetry of women. In addition, they were criticized for not being daring and not being competent enough to adapt the tradition of the fathers; it was insinuated that they were abnormal and degenerate. It is questioned whether this effemination used by the adversaries of the Modernists as weapons to discredit them caused the Modernists to react by distancing themselves from their women colleagues in order to mark their place in a masculine group free of romantic and old-fashioned women’s chatter. Questioned is whether it had been part of the habitus of the literary field to be a man, and whether the symbolic capital of travel, internationalism, existentialist freedom, and the bohemian lifestyle inherently excluded women. In the period 1955-1965 a new breed of young intellectuals became influential in the mass media who blatantly advocated the aesthetic norms of New Criticism in their reviews. One may see demands to „show, not tell,“ demands for refinement, and demands for impersonal or autonomous form with emphasis on the new, the present. Country descriptions and historical or „epic“ novels were condemned. The generation of critics that followed the Modernists had a new symbolic capital to back their power demands: a formal education, fastidiousness and the ease of global travel. But their heterodox views did not consolidate them into one group with one platform as the redactive editors of Birtingur had done, although they were in agreement on the condition of Icelandic prose literature: poor and growing worse. This new generation of critics had something else in common — they did not mention women writers in their essays. In the women’s journals Embla (1945-49) and Melkorka (1944-1962) no position is taken on the debate about the Modernists, and the little discussion of literature that appeared was laced with caution. The one thing these women’s journals held in common with the men’s journal is that none discussed the contemporary situation of women writers in Iceland. The poet Arnfridur Jonatansdottir, who undoubtedly categorizes as a modernist in her first book of poetry (1958), received an ambiguous review in Birtingur, but no poem by her appeared in the journal. Between 1955 and 1961 only two short stories and eight poems by women appeared in Birtingur, which was issued four times a year. It seems that there was little interest in publishing material by women. Indeed, women writers were not generally spoken about, but from a few obscure remarks one may determine that they were regarded

(1) Front Board
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(467) Back Cover
(468) Back Cover
(469) Rear Flyleaf
(470) Rear Flyleaf
(471) Rear Board
(472) Rear Board
(473) Spine
(474) Fore Edge
(475) Scale
(476) Color Palette