ABSTRACT
The Golden Age came to an end with Denmark's ignominious defeat in an armed confrontation with Prussia and Austria over the duchies of Slesvig and Holstein in 1864. Losing territory, Denmark suffered an immense sense of loss that also made itself felt in literature. Several established writers tried to confront the tragedy, but the most popular postwar author, Vilhelm Bergs0e, owed his success to his evasion of the issue. His Fra Piazza del Popolo (1867; From the Piazza del Popolo) is a compendium of seven long novellas told by members of the Danish artists' colony in Rome as they wait for the release of a colleague kidnapped by brigands. The characters, some of whom move from story to story, come from a large range of social levels and national backgrounds-British lords and ladies, Byronic Danish students, Italian putane and thieves. Fra Piazza del Popolo, retrospective and romanticizing, is a last product of the Golden Age, whose literature, however fascinating in its refinement, is socially narrow. In fact, Bergs0e's Fra den gamle Fabrik (1869; From the Old Factory), a fictionalized account of his own childhood, features one of the first appearances of factory life in the Danish novel, albeit from the perspective of the director's son.
