Progress and Loss. The Contribution of Literature to the Myth of Swiss Hydropower

What finds its way into literature when hydropower forms the subject of a play, a novel or a poem? And conversely, what contribution do literary forms make when progress and loss are negotiated in the development of hydropower? The planned dissertation will examine these questions on the basis of an extensive corpus of texts. It aims to provide an overview of the subject of hydropower in Swiss literature over the last hundred years or so, without simply following the grand narratives that inevitably appear together with hydropower. Rather, the work on the Swiss myth of hydropower will be analysed on the basis of paradoxical or pathetic scenes. The reading of fictional texts in the context of factual texts such as pamphlets, newspaper articles and specialist articles shows the circulation of argumentative figures, images and narratives across textual boundaries and ultimately makes visible what can be said in literature within the societies of high and late modernity based on the division of labour.