The Cracking of Eggs: Exploring Genre, Hypotexts, and Interpretative Gaps in Peer Hultberg’s The City and the World (Byen og Verden, 1992)

Abstract

This paper deals with the hitherto unexplored issues of genre and transtextual references, unity and coherence in Peer Hultberg's novel The City and the World (Byen og verden, 1992). Systematic research on Hultberg has come to a halt after 2010, paradoxically after the entire legacy became freely available. In my opinion, certain specific literary allusions and genre conventions, to which the author himself refers, partly in his lifetime and partly in his posthumously published self-analytical writings, have not yet been explored. In my article I will attempt to critically compare the results so far with the transtextual references indicated by the author. Furthermore, since the question on the unity of the novel's seemingly independent stories has remained unanswered since its publication from a generic perspective, I attempt to interpret the unity between the hundred texts using a genre framework that has not been used before.