Barbara, findes hun mon derude?

En diskussion af mænds forestillinger om kvinder

Resumé

Abstract
Barbara, the eponymous protagonist of Barbara by the Faroese author Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen, is one of the most fascinating and widely debated female figures in modern Nordic literature. But was she modelled on a real person, or does she reflect certain masculine and historically contingent fantasies about the nature of womanhood? On the occasion of a newly published anthology on Barbara, Nils Gunder Hansen pursues the question of whether—and in what sense—Barbara exists somewhere out there.