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Jensen, Johannes V. (1873–1950) By Krouk, Dean
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Winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in literature, the novelist and poet Johannes V. Jensen was Denmark’s major 20th-century literary figure. Much celebrated for his historical novel Kongens Fald [The Fall of the King] (1900–1901), Jensen also penned the poetry collection Digte 1906 [Poems 1906], which had a substantial influence on Scandinavian modernism. Jensen’s wide travels in Europe, Asia, and the United States left a mark on his cultural, aesthetic, and anthropological interests. He encountered the new marvels of technology and industry at the Paris World’s Exhibition in 1900, which he described in Den gotiske Renaissance (1901), a collection of travel reportage that calls for a new, vigorous aesthetics and psychology to match the modern age.