ABSTRACT
In the late 1800s, various ideas of Socialism had spread in Sweden. Simultaneously, questions of religion, Christianity, and the Church were urgent, engaging even advocates of socialism. Yet, the resistance to both Christianity and Socialism was considerable, and reconciling the two was a delicate matter. This essay studies the intriguing interaction between Socialism and Christianity in Swedish prose fiction of the early 1900s, especially devotional narratives and working-class fiction. At issue is the tension between spiritual-idealistic and economic-materialistic tendencies, how the handling of this tension is depicted, and what imaginations of Socialism and Christianity this depiction testifies to. The analysis shows that the borders between Christian and socialist imaginations were not clear-cut.
