Comparative literature Books

Book SynopsisThis book is the first to analyse how BBC radio presented Anglophone Caribbean literature and in turn aided and influenced the shape of imaginative writing in the region. Glyne A. Griffith examines Caribbean Voices broadcasts to the region over a fifteen-year period and reveals that though the program’s funding was colonial in orientation, the content and form were antithetical to the very colonial enterprise that had brought the program into existence. Part literary history and part literary biography, this study fills a gap in the narrative of the region’s literary history. Table of ContentsContents Permissions Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 The Genesis of Caribbean Voices: People and Policies Chapter 2 The Critics’ Circle Chapter 3 Caribbean Voices and Competing Visions of Post-Colonial Community Chapter 4 A Sustaining Epistolarly Community Chapter 5 The Naipaul / Mittelholzer Years: 1954-58 Afterword Notes Works Cited Appendix Index

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Book SynopsisThis book is inspired by the author’s work as part of a major international and interdisciplinary research group at the University of Konstanz, Germany: “What If—On the Meaning, Relevance, and Epistemology of Counterfactual Claims and Thought Experiments.” Having contributed to great discoveries, such as those by Galileo and Einstein, thought experiments are especially topical in the twenty-first century, since this is a concept that bridges the gap between the arts and the sciences, promoting interdisciplinary innovation. To study thought experiments in literature, it is imperative to examine relevant texts closely: this has rarely been done to date and this is precisely what this book does as a pilot study focusing on selected works of philosophy and literature. Specifically, thought experiments by Thomas Malthus are analyzed side by side with short stories and novels by Vladimir Odoevsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Alexander Bogdanov and Aleksei Tolstoy, Alexander Chaianov and Nina Berberova.Trade Review“While Grigorian carefully follows the narrative of each text, she discovers the connections between them, thanks to her consistent viewpoint. As she maintains, she successfully brings chronologically isolated utopian or dystopian dreams into a dialogue with each other, with Malthus and so on. … Finally, let me remark on the practical significance of this book. Grigorian argues that thought experiments investigated here will provide helpful insight into social and environmental problems in the post-2020 world. This global crisis has become much more serious after February 24, 2022. The cosmic scenarios concerning Malthusian theory provided by Russian writers will enable us to think about the world today from new perspectives.”— Yuki Fukui, Studies in East European Thought“Engagingly and clearly written, Visions of the Future represents an original approach to Russian utopian fiction and utopian fiction in general. This originality emerges primarily in the book's orientation to the strictly formal influence of counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning on the narrative strategies employed in utopian fiction, while its persuasive force lies in its careful account of well-chosen examples of this influence.”— Jeff Love, Research Professor of German and Russian, Clemson UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Thomas Malthus, the Problem of Population, and Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Concise Overview Thought Experiments in Vladimir Odoevsky’s Russian Nights (1844) Thomas Malthus and Nikolai Chernyshevsky: Struggle for Existence or Mutual Help? Utopian Dreams in What Is to Be Done? (1863) Revolution on Earth and Mars: Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908) and Aleksei Tolstoy’s Aelita (1923) A Peasant Utopia: Alexander Chaianov’s My Brother Aleksei’s Journey (1920) Overpopulation in Nina Berberova’s Short Story “In Memory of Schliemann” (1958), in the Context of Malthusian Theory ConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays covers a hundred-year history of Russian-language literature in Israel, including the pre-state period. Some of the studies are devoted to an overview of the literary process and the activities of its participants, others—to individual genres and movements. As a result, a complex and multifaceted picture emerges of a not quite fully defined, but very lively and dynamic community that develops in the most difficult conditions. The contributors trace the paths of Russian-Israeli prose, poetry and drama, various waves of avant-garde, fantasy, and critical thought. Today, in Russian-Israeli literature, the voices of writers of various generations and waves of repatriation are intertwined: from the "seventies" to the "war aliyah" of the recent times. Both the Russian-Israeli authors and their critics often hold different opinions of their respective roles in Israel’s historical and literary storms. While disagreeing on the definition of their place on the map of modern culture, Russian-Israeli writers are united by a shared bond with the fate of the Jewish state.Trade Review“While this book features many different authors and diverse objects of investigation, it also creates a panoramic view of Russian-Israeli literature—both in style and in chronology. The book should be of great interest to scholars and general readers alike. The very notion of ‘Russian-Israeli literature’ (similarly to the notion of ‘Russian-American literature’) will doubtless illicit questions. Some readers might even ask: And where does the writer belong if she or he has two addresses, sometimes even simultaneously, in two different countries? In what category should we place translations into the Russian language? What is the principal difference between Russian-Israeli literature and, say, Yiddish-Israeli or Polish-Israeli literatures? In other words, this book not only offers a great deal of new materials but also invites us to think of the directions of further research.”—Gennady Estraikh, Professor, New York University, author of Transatlantic Russian Jewishness“Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature is a unique and peerless project. Despite the fragmentary nature of the genre stated in the title, this collection captures many aspects of the previously unexplored, multibranched phenomenon of Russian-Israeli literature. The chronological span renders this collection particularly ponderous as it allows the reader to conceptualize Russian-Israeli literature as one of the most original, historically varied ‘hyphenated’ literatures with its own fairly rather rich traditions. The book brings together some of today’s leading researchers from a number of countries, thus reflecting a diversity of viewpoints, epistemological contexts and theoretical approaches; such diversity has never before been seen in any works on this subject. And this motley gathering of authors constitutes not a shortcoming but rather one of the collection’s great merits for it betokens the very complex nature Russian-Israeli literature, having come about at the intersection of various geographical and cultural identities and styles, which evolved and changed over the course of the waves of aliyah, political regimes, and many other circumstances. I urge you to read this book. It will be of great interest to all those interested not only in Israeli and Russian, but also the multilingual and multifaceted Jewish culture of different epoch.”—Klavdia Smola, Professor, University of Dresden, author of Inventing the Tradition: Contemporary Russian-Jewish Literature“Russian-Israeli literature is, perhaps, the most fascinating of all the literatures to have been created and still being created in the Russian language outside the boundaries of the Russian Empire, the USSR and the post-Soviet spaces. While the title of this book contains the modest term ‘studies,’ the book in fact carries out a tremendously complex task: to conceptualize the corpus of Russian-Israeli literature by concentrating the work along two principal axes, historical-cultural and generic. Additionally challenges faced by the book’s editors and contributors had to do with the fact that a significant part of Russian-Israeli literature resists cross-cultural translation into any of the dominant languages of contemporary culture. Much of what has been created by Russian-Israeli writers could be translated as ‘thoughtcrime.’ The project of delineating the historical contours of Russian-Israeli literature and to understand its provenance and development lies at the very heart of this remarkable book.”—Dennis Sobolev, Professor, University of Haifa, author of The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins Table of ContentsFrom the EditorsRussian-Language Literature in Eretz Israel (Basic Outlines and Authors)Vladimir KhazanJulius Margolin and His TimesLuba JurgensonIsraeli-Soviet Literary Ties in the 1950s–1980s: from Translations to Aliyah LibraryMarat GrinbergLeaving Russia: Russian-Israeli Literature of the 1970s–1980sAleksei SurinPaths of Russian Avant-Garde Poetry in IsraelMaxim D. ShrayerProse of the Aliyah of the 1990s–2000sRoman KatsmanRussian-Israeli Prose in the Second Decade of the Twenty-First CenturyElena PromyshlianskaiaGenres of Israeli-Russian Fantastic FictionElena RimonThe Phenomenon of Russian-Israeli Dramaturgy of the 1970s–2020sZlata ZaretskyFrom the History of Russian Israeli Literary Criticism (On One Method of Delineating Literary Contacts between Russia and Israel) Leonid KatsisAbout the ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisThe title of this monograph, ‘Polish Jewish Re-Remembering’, refers to the post-1989, thirty-year-long process of reviving attention to Polish-Jewish relations in historical, cultural, and literary studies, including the impact of Jews on the development of Polish culture, their presence in Polish social life, and the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Poland. The book consists of four parts: the first focuses on Polish, Jewish and Polish-Jewish Literature (dealing mainly with pre-1939 literary works); the second, on the post-war literary output of the Polish-Jewish writer Arnold Słucki (1920–1972); the third, on Polish-Israeli literary images in the works of writers who were active in Israel (1948–2018); and the fourth, on recent (after 2000) Polish Holocaust literature.Trade Review“In this sweeping and heart-wrenching book, Slawomir Żurek takes us on a fascinating voyage from the prewar Polish-Jewish poets to Polish writers in Israel who are struggling to contend—in the shadow of the Shoah and in their mother tongue—with the shattering of their once-flourishing world. Packed with deftly sketched portraits, the result is an impassioned and poignant history of a bifurcated Polish-Jewish culture.”— Vivian Liska, author of German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy“This wide-ranging and path-breaking collection of essays is a comprehensive account of the way the impact of Polish Jews on the development of Polish culture, their presence in Polish social life, and relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles has been reflected in literature and literary criticism. These complex and controversial topics are handled in a manner that is both sensitive and dispassionate, and the book seeks to find a path to a common Polish Jewish remembering. It is essential reading for all those interested in the complex interaction of Poles and Jews.”— Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, Chief Historian, Global Education Outreach Project, Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw“The relation between the Polish and Jewish literary fields constitutes a major area of Sławomir Jacek Żurek’s scholarly research. His dedication to ‘The Polish-Jewish Borderland’ has lasted decades, and his contributions to the field of Christian-Jewish relations and the origin of antisemitism contains important studies on historical, sociological, literary, and spiritual topics.In Polish-Jewish Re-Remembering, Żurek aspires to a commendable goal of reevaluating a topic that’s in ‘the processes of transformation, transmutation, and transfiguration,’ to identify the crucial sources of his conclusions. The reader observes people of different identities, including different identities among Jews themselves.This well informed and fascinating narration provides a roadmap to dealing with one of the most difficult areas in history and literature as well as the reality we still experience around us.” — Anna Frajlich, Senior Lecturer Emerita, Columbia University, and Polish writer. “Zurek's book is an extensive study of Polish-Jewish relations. The area where everything is played out here is memory, and the title category of re-remembering means extracting content from the deep layers of forgetting and repression. The author's interpretive work can be called burying in memory, which has a double sense: it is about digging through memory and burying in it what has been dug up, about extracting from oblivion and entrusting the social memory with the extracted content. Even more explicitly: it's about revival and burial at the same time.In this archaeological-philological work, the author seeks above all that which is connective, bilateral, and therefore neither exclusively Jewish nor exclusively Polish, but Jewish-Polish or even JewishPolish. He discusses literary depictions of Polish-Jewish cities (Lublin) and regions (the Borderlands), presents a common warfare (Polish Jews in the army of the Second Polish Republic), analyzes the linguistic consciousness of Polish-Jewish poets, extensively presents the work of the important poet Arnold Slutsky, and interprets the writings of Polish Jews creating in Israel.All these studies bring us closer to the last part of the book, in which the author presents Polish literature written after 2000 as a rogue method of assimilating and processing Jewish culture. Younger writers introduce traces of the presence of Jewish culture into Polish literature but use the Holocaust as a kind of bible of the third millennium—as the broadest common language, as a system of cultural references, as a set of topoi. In addition, they introduce the Holocaust using pop culture, collective psychoanalysis, or pornography. They consider no literary tricks forbidden, no register of language inaccessible. And they shatter the system of correctness. Not because they want to use the Holocaust for scandal, but because they want to understand the Polish present—full of social aggression, transferred hatred, crafted memories and real content of displacement. Zurek thus leads us to the conclusion that one cannot understand oneself in today's Polish society without understanding Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust. Actually, a reader could start reading the whole book from this last part. And then retreat into the depths of memory. Re-memorizing corpses of texts and corpses of bodies.” — Professor Przemysław Czapliński, Director of Center for Open Humanities, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Table of ContentsIntroduction: Why “Re-Remembering?” BETWEEN ARIA AND GOLUS: POLISH, JEWISH, AND POLISH JEWISH LITERATURE1. Magen Lublin (לובלין מגן): Arnsztajnowa and Czechowicz2. Shadows of Jewish Lublin in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Polish Poetry3. Polish Jews in the Army of the Second Republic: Adolf Rudnicki’s Profile i drobiazgi żołnierskie 4. Christian-Jewish Relationships: Shalom Acsh’s “The Witch from Castile”5. The Languages of Polish Jews: Linguistic Dilemmas of Polish Jewish Poets 6. The Mythical Phenomenon of the Borderlands in Polish Jewish Poetry7. Polish Jewish Poetry and the ChildFOUR SIDES OF TIME: THE LITERARY TRAVELS OF ARNOLD SŁUCKI8. Polish Jewish Warsaw: Lyrical Notes9. Two Faces of Russia: Biography and Poetry10. “Idols” and “Idol”: Interpretations 11. A Polish Publicist in IsraelTWO LANDS AND TWO SKIES: POLISH ISRAELI LITERARY IMAGES12. Poland and Poles in the Poetry of Authors Writing in Polish in Israel13. The Double Messiah: Leo Lipski’s Piotruś 14. Poetry and Judaism: Anna Frajlich’s “Wiersze izraelskie”15. Literary Criticism in the Israeli Daily Newspaper Nowiny-Kurier after 1968: A ReconnaissanceTHE TEXTUAL WORLD OF THE HOLOCAUST: THE SHOAH IN RECENT POLISH LITERATURE16. The Shoah and Topoi17. Reconstructions 18. Transfigurations 19. SubversionsConclusion: Comparative Study of MemoryBibliographyIndex of Persons

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Book SynopsisGayatri Chakravorty Spivak declares the death of comparative literature as we know it and sounds an urgent call for a âœnew comparative literature,â in which the discipline is reborn.Table of ContentsPreface to the Twentieth Anniversary EditionAcknowledgments1. Crossing Borders2. Collectivities3. PlanetarityNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisGayatri Chakravorty Spivak declares the death of comparative literature as we know it and sounds an urgent call for a new comparative literature, in which the discipline is reborn.Table of ContentsPreface to the Twentieth Anniversary EditionAcknowledgments1. Crossing Borders2. Collectivities3. PlanetarityNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTerry Eagleton looks back across sixty years to an extraordinary critical milieu that transformed the study of literature

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Book Synopsis"The articles in this reference book, all fully updated and from the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Fourth Edition, provide a complete survey of the poetic history and practice in over 100 major national, regional, and diasporic literatures and language traditions throughout the world"--Trade Review"Helpful spin-offs from an acclaimed 'mother volume.'"--Library JournalTable of ContentsPreface vii Acknowledgments ix Alphabetical List of Entries xi Bibliographical Abbreviations xiii General Abbreviations xvii Contributors xix Entries A to Z 1 Index 613

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Book SynopsisMaps of Empire examines how literature was affected by the decay and break up of old models of imperial administration in the mid-twentieth century.Table of ContentsPreface: Cartography and the Space of World Literature 1. A Portmanteau of the Nation in Imīl Habībī’s The Pessoptimist 2. The Literary Space of Authority in Camara Laye’s Le Regard du Roi 3. Imperial Palimpsest or Exquisite Corpse: Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de violence 4. Disorientation and Horror in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl 5. Orality and the Space of Translation in the Pima Ant Songs Afterword: Decolonizing Literary Space Bibliography

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Book SynopsisNew essays by leading scholars on the most perplexing of modern writers, Franz Kafka. No other 20th-century writer of German-language literature has been as fully accepted into the canon of world literature as Franz Kafka. The unsettlingly, enigmatically surreal world of Kafka's novels and stories continues to fascinate readers and critics of each new generation, who in turn continue to find new readings. One thing has become clear: although all theories attempt to appropriate Kafka, there is no one key to his work. The challenge to criticshas been to present a strong point of view while taking account of previous Kafka research, a challenge that has been met by the contributors to this volume. Contributors: James Rolleston, Clayton Koelb, Walter H. Sokel, Judith Ryan, Russel A. Berman, Ritchie Robertson, Henry Sussman, Stanley Corngold, Bianca Theisen, Rolf J. Goebel, Richard T. Gray, Ruth V. Gross, Sander L. Gilman, John Zilcosky, Mark Harman James Rolleston is Professor Emeritus of German at Duke University.Trade ReviewContains new material and insights by noted scholars whose work represents a full range of methodological and thematic diversity. * CHOICE *Appropriately reflects the ever-widening circles within which Kafka's texts can be viewed. Especially prominent ... are the discussions of texts as meta-narratives, their thematizations of problematic message transfer, and their meditations on unbridgeable misconception. * MODERN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE *This is a particularly successful collection,... several of whose individual studies will undoubtedly become touchstones of future Kafka research. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *This collection is necessary for any student of Kafka. The voices represented here, from the seasoned ... to the newly emerging, speak to the wide methodological range that typifies Kafka studies. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Kafka Begins - James Rolleston Critical Editions I: The 1994 Paperback Edition - James Rolleston Critical Editions II: Will the Real Franz Kafka Please Stand Up? - Beyond Self-Assertion: A Life of Reading Kafka - Walter H. Sokel Kafka Before Kafka: The Early Stories - Judith Ryan Tradition and Betrayal in "Das Urteil" - Russell A. Berman Kafka as Anti-Christian: "Das Urteil," "Die Verwandlung" and the Aphorisms - Ritchie Robertson Kafka's Aesthetics: A Primer: From the Fragments to the Novels - Henry Sussman Medial Allusions at the Ouset of Der Proceß; or, res in media - Stanley Corngold Kafka's Circus Turns: "Auf der Galerie" and "Erstes Leid" - Bianca Theisen Kafka and Postcolonial Critique: Der Verschollene, - Rolf J. Goebel Disjunctive Signs: Semiotics, Aesthetics and Failed Mediation in "In der Strafkolonie" - Richard T. Gray Hunting Kafka Out of Season: Enigmatics in the Short Fictions - Ruth V. Gross A Dream of Jewishness Denied: Kafka's Tumor and "Ein Landarzt" - Sander L. Gilman Surveying the Castle: Kafka's Colonial Visions - John Zilcosky Making Everything "A Little Uncanny": Kafka's Variants to Das Schloß and What They Can Tell Us About His Writing ProcessHis Writing Process - Mark Harman Kafka Imagines His Readers: The Rhetoric of "Josefine die Sängerin" and "Der Bau" -

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Book SynopsisNew, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thinker of the European Enlightenment. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is one of the great names of the classical age of German literature. One of the last universalists, he wrote on aesthetics, literary history and theory, historiography, anthropology, psychology,education, and theology; translated and adapted poetry from ancient Greek, English, Italian, even from Persian and Arabic; collected folk songs from around the world; and pioneered a better understanding of non-European cultures.A student of Kant's, he became Goethe's mentor in Strasbourg, and was a mastermind of the Sturm und Drang and a luminary of classical Weimar. But the wide range of Herder's interests and writings, along with his unorthodox ways of seeing things, seems to have prevented him being fully appreciated for any of them. His image has also been clouded by association with political ideologies, the proponents of which ignored the message of Humanität in histexts. So although Herder is acknowledged by scholars to be one of the great thinkers of European Enlightenment, there is no up-to-date, comprehensive introduction to his works in English, a lacuna this book fills with seventeennew, specially commissioned essays. Contributors: Hans Adler, Wulf Koepke, Steven Martinson, Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont, John Zammito, Jürgen Trabant, Stefan Greif, Ulrich Gaier, Karl Menges, Christoph Bultmann, Martin Keßler, Arnd Bohm, Gerhard Sauder, Robert E. Norton, Harro Müller-Michaels, Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernest A. Menze. Hans Adler is Halls-Bascom Professor of Modern Literature Studies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison. Wulf Koepke is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German, Texas A&M University and recipient of the Medal of the International J. G. Herder Society.Trade ReviewAll the essays represent the height of current research.. A work like this one does not exist in the German language! * ARBITRIUM *Until now, anyone looking for a comprehensive introduction to the life and thought of Herder had few options; with their co-edited [volume] however, Hans Adler and Wulf Koepke have identified a need for a general(ist) presentation of his ideas--and satisfied it. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *Not since the appearance of Clark's monumental Herder: His Life and Thought has anyone produced a Herder study of this scope in English. The list of the 19 contributors of the 17 essays reads like a Who's Who of Herder scholarship.. Several features make this meticulously edited collection particularly attractive. The texts, including those translated, are in clear and readable English. All Herder quotations are given in German and English.. In sum, on all counts this is an impressive, important addition to the growing body of Herder scholarship. * CHOICE *The first English-language introduction that presents the work of Johann Gottfried Herder in all the richness of its many facets. . . . The thoroughly edited volume is doubtless well-placed to promote the knowledge of Herder's body of work in the Anglo-Saxon world. * GERMANISTIK *The essays offer not so much introductions as summative explorations of the current state of knowledge of Herder.. [A] well-conceived and well-executed companion. * H-NET GERMAN REVIEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction - and Wulf Koepke Herder's Life and Works - Steven D. Martinson Herder's Epistemology - Heinrich Clairmont and Marion Heinz Herder and Historical Metanarrative: What's Philosophical about History? - John H. Zammito Herder's Concept of Humanität - Herder and Language - Juergen Trabant Herder's Aesthetics and :Poetics - Stefan Greif Myth, Mythology, New Mythology - Ulrich Gaier Particular Universals: Herder on National Literature, Popular Literature, and World Literature - Karl Menges The Germans and Their Future Literature - Wulf Koepke Herder's Biblical Studies and Theology I - Christoph Bultmann Herder's Biblical Studies and Theology II - Martin Kessler Herder and Politics - Arnd Bohm Herder's Poetic Works and Translations - Gerhard Sauder Herder's Style - Herder as Critical Contemporary - Robert E. Norton Herder in Office - Harro Mueller-Michaels The Reception and Influence of Herder's Works - Guenter Arnold and Kurt Kloocke and Ernest A. Menze

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Book SynopsisNew essays by leading scholars on major aspects of the most significant Austrian writer of the postwar generation. Since the death of Thomas Bernhard in 1989, the literary reputation of this complex and unique writer has risen to the point that he is now regarded as a major European figure. Bernhard emerged in the 1960s as one of Austria's major writers, challenging the popularity of such established writers as Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass on the German literary scene. His idiosyncratic prose consists of a tragic-comic blend of themes such as suicide, madness, and isolation combined with highly satirical and histrionic invectives against culture, tradition, and society. As a skillful impresario of public scandals by means of verbal assaults upon Austrian elite culture, Bernhard also earned himself the epithet of Übertreibungskünstler (artist of exaggeration). In this art of cultural and political provocation Bernhard remains unmatched to the present day. This volume of essays provides contributions by well-known critics that examine the most salient aspects of Bernhard's work, offering insights into literary strategies and public themes that made Bernhard one of Europe's masters of modern prose and drama. Essays examine Bernhard's complex artistic sensibility, his impact on Austria's critical memory, his relation to the legacy of Austrian Jewish culture, his representative value as Austria's prime literary export, and his cosmopolitanism and its significance forthe rapidly changing multicultural landscape of Europe. Matthias Konzett is associate professor of German at Yale University. He is the author of The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek (Camden House, 2000). Click here to view the introduction (PDF file 97KB)Trade ReviewSucceeds marvelously in placing Bernhard within the context of postwar Austria. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *The present volume makes clear that the curtain has not yet fallen [on Bernhard] by a long way. * MONATSHEFTE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: National Iconoclasm: Thomas Bernhard and the Austrian Avant-garde - Matthias Konzett Perverted Attitudes of Mourning in the Wake of Thomas Bernhard's Death - Marlene Streeruwitz The Established Outsider: Thomas Bernhard - Dagmar C. G. Lorenz A Testament Betrayed: Bernhard and His Legacy - Stephen D. Dowden Homeland, Death, and Otherness in Thomas Bernhard's Early Lyrical Works - Paola Bozzi The Broken Window Handle: Thomas Bernhard's Notion of Weltbezug - Ruediger Goerner Thomas Bernhard's Poetics of Comedy - Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler Fragments of a Deluge: The Theater of Thomas Bernhard's Prose - Mark M. Anderson The Stranger Inside the Word: From Thomas Bernhard's Plays to the Anatomical Theater of Elfriede Jelinek - Gitta Honegger Costume Drama: Performance and Identity in Bernhard's Works - Andrew J. Webber Language Speaks: Anglo-Bernhard: Thomas Bernhard in Translation - Gitta Honegger Ungleichzeitigkeiten: Class Relationships in Bernhard's Fiction - Jonathan Long Thomas Bernhard's Der Untergeher: Newtonian Realities and Deterministic Chaos - Willy Riemer My Latest Encounter with Bernhard - Marlene Streeruwitz

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Book SynopsisThe first sustained interrogation of travel in Sebald's literary and essayistic work, employing multivalent and new critical perspectives. W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) is the most prominent and perhaps the most enigmatic German-language writer of recent decades. His books have had a more profound impact outside the German-speaking world than those of any other. His innovative approach to writing brings to the fore concerns that are central to contemporary culture: the relationship between memory, history, and trauma; the experience of exile and our relation to place; and the role of literature (and photography) in the remembrance of the past. This collection of essays places travel at the center of Sebald's poetics and shows how his appropriation of travel in its myriad historical and cultural forms -- tourism, the pilgrimage, the walking vacation, travel as escape -- works to craft intertextual narratives in which the pursuit of individual life stories is mapped onto a wider European cultural history of loss and destruction. Following these cues,the contributors wander the various modalities of travel in Sebald's writing in order to discover how walking, flying, sojourning, and other kinds of peregrination inform the relationship between writing, reading, memory, and place in Sebald's work. At the same time, the essays uncover in innovative ways the affinities between Sebald and literary travelers like Bruce Chatwin, Franz Kafka, Adalbert Stifter, Christoph Ransmayr, and Joseph Conrad. Contributors: Christian Moser, J. J. Long, Carolin Duttlinger, Martin Klebes, Alan Itkin, James Martin, Brad Prager, Neil Christian Pages, Margaret Bruzelius, Barbara Hui, Dora Osborne, Peter Arnds. Markus Zisselsbergeris Assistant Professor of German at the University of Miami, Florida.Trade ReviewThe collection [contains] 12 essays of remarkable quality . . . . [It] indeed journeys into 'undiscover'd country,' pursues innovative interpretive paths, and opens intriguing new vistas . . . . [T]he work is destined to become a milestone of Sebald scholarship. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *[T]his is a distinguished addition to Sebald criticism, and essential reading for scholars, students and general readers with any interest in Sebald. * JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES *[W]ill take its place on the map of Sebald studies . . . . assembling . . . a wide range of (mostly) excellent essays. . . . The real value of this collection lies in the individual essays connected by the master trope of travel. . . . The strongest chapters make a genuine contribution to Sebald studies and will guarantee the book a lengthy shelf life . . . . * ENGLISH STUDIES IN CANADA *Those new to Sebald would do well to study Zisselsberger's fine introduction, which sums up issues in Sebald scholarship and places the book in the context of the vast literature on Sebald. . . . Though it treats themes familiar to Sebald scholarship, . . . the book does not evoke the feeling of repetitiveness that so many contributions to the Sebald literature do. . . . Illustrations appear throughout. . . . This book is destined to become a standard. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *A significant contribution to scholarship (particularly since it includes a reprint of Sebald's early, not previously widely available essay, 'Die Kunst des Fliegens'). If the exact calibration of the relationship in Sebald's work between the two terms 'travel' and 'literature' remains unresolved, the volume is a fitting tribute to this most elusive of authors. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Fluchtträume/Traumfluchten; Journeys to the Undiscover'd Country Die Kunst des Fliegens by W. G. Sebald Peripatetic Liminality: Sebald and the Tradition of the Literary Walk W. G. Sebald: The Anti-Tourist "A Wrong Turn of the Wheel": Sebald's Journeys of (In)Attention If You Come to a Spa: Displacing the Cure in Schwindel. Gefühle. and Austerlitz Campi Deserti: Polar Landscapes and the Limits of Knowledge in Sebald and Ransmayr "Eine Art Eingang zur Unterwelt": Katabasis in Austerlitz Convergence Insufficiency: On Seeing Passages between W. G. Sebald and the "Travel Writer" Bruce Chatwin Tripping: On Sebald's "Stifter" Adventure, Imprisonment, and Melancholy: Heart of Darkness and Die Ringe des Saturn Mapping Historical Networks in Die Ringe des Saturn Topographical Anxiety and Dysfunctional Systems: Die Ausgewanderten and Freud's Little Hans While the Hidden Horrors of History are Briefly Illuminated: The Poetics of Wandering in Austerlitz and Die Ringe des Saturn Works Cired Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThe first study to utilize the Klagenfurt Edition of Musil's Nachlass offers a close reading of textual variations, emphasizing Musil's commitment to the artist's role in re-creating the world. Robert Musil, known to be a scientific and philosophical thinker, was committed to aesthetics as a process of experimental creation of an ever-shifting reality. Musil wanted, above all, to be a creative writer, and he obsessively engaged in almost endless deferral via variations and metaphoric possibilities in his novel project, The Man without Qualities. This lifelong process of writing is embodied in the unfinished novel by a recurring metaphor of self-generating de-centered circle worlds. The present study analyzes this structure with reference to Musil's concepts of the utopia of the Other Condition, Living and Dead Words, Specific and Non-Specific Emotions, Word Magic, and the Still Life. In contrast to most recent studies of Musil, it concludes that the extratemporal metaphoric experience of the Other Condition does not fail, but rather constitutes the formal and ethical core of Musil's novel. The first study to utilize the Klagenfurter Ausgabe (Klagenfurt edition) of Musil's literary remains (a searchable annotated text), The World as Metaphor offers a close reading of variations and text genesis, shedding light not only on Musil's novel, but also on larger questions about the modernist artist's role and responsibility in consciously re-creating the world.Trade ReviewGrill's meticulously researched study offers a persuasive and original interpretation of [Musil's] novel. . . . [T]his book is highly recommended for a deeper understanding of Musil's brilliant and still relevant modernist work. * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *Grill's book is a careful meditation on the poetics of metaphor that she finds organizing Musil's novel. Grill has mined the Nachlaß to good effect, making available important material and new considerations of the novel. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *[A] worthy contribution to international Musil research. Grill obtains with it the rare status of a researcher who at one and the same time explains a thesis and carries it out in her own writing. For her painstaking work in the archive the study earns the particular praise and interest of those who want to concern themselves more deeply with the canonical works of modernism such as The Man without Qualities. * MUSIL-FORUM *[P]rovides an invaluable structure - the best I've encountered - for assessing the later sections and unfinished draft material of The Man Without Qualities. . . . Grill's major achievement is in bringing together the disparate, unpublished material of Musil's last years into a structure that clarifies, at least somewhat, Musil's ambitions. . . . For illuminating the join between the earlier and latter sections of [Musil's novel] in a way that gives real shape to the whole, Grill's book is tremendous. * DAVID AUERBACH, WAGGISH.ORG *[I]nspired and textually knowledgeable . . . . [A] spirited and enthusiastic defence of the creative literary act as a kind of utopian 'révolution permanente' . . . forever avoiding closure . . . . The reader is led through a rich textual landscape, from quotation to quotation (including material from the Klagenfurt electronic edition . . .), but the overall impression thus generated is of a self-referential and secular artistic universe that is loaded with theological expectations - something that would surely have made Musil smile. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Failure to Reconcile as Modernist Success Circles Repeatability and Crime Word Magic Still Life: (Not) Doing What Isn't Done Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe essays collected in Samuel Johnson Among the Modernists frame this major writer in an unfamiliar milieu and company: high modernism and its aftermath. By bringing Johnson to bear on the various authors and topics gathered here, the book foregrounds some aspects of modernism and its practitioners that would otherwise remain hidden and elusive, even as it sheds new light on Johnson. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov. Chapter contributors include major scholars in their field, including Melvyn New, Jack Lynch, Thomas M. Curley, Greg Clingham and Clement Hawes. These ground-breaking essays offer a vital and exciting interrogation of Modernism from a wholly fresh perspective.Trade Review'These consistently informative, persuasive, and provocative essays should reshape notions of both literary history and Johnson's place in that history.' Elizabeth Kraft, CHOICE'The most interesting essays are those focused on Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot, those Modernists most explicitly concerned with Johnson [...] and Lee becomes very interesting when he turns his attention to their critical judgments; the two are heretical in the same attractive ways. [...] The literary criticism of Johnson and the Modernists [provide] the most fertile site of future scholarship. [...] The essays in the collection are all intellectually alive and well written [and] may provide a model for a new field of study: not biographies of Johnson the man but histories of Johnson the icon.'Lance Wilcox, The Scriblerian'In addition to Lee’s thoughtful introduction, this collection includes nine chapters that put Johnson into conversation with various authors and aspects of the first sixty years of the twentieth century. [...] Any reader of his fine translatio studii will have a deeper appreciation for what Clingham calls the paradoxical “invisibility” of these master prose stylists.[...] Anthony Lee has done Johnsonian and modernists alike a service in bringing these essays together and to light.'John Sitter, 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries of the Early Modern Era'This is prose written in a Johnsonian spirit, even if the style bears few of the master's hallmarks. [...] Each of its nine chapters proposes a sort of conversation between Johnson and other eighteenth-century writers, or between Johnson and a more recent author, or both. The comparison of Woolf with Johnson is perhaps the most fruitful of all the pairings in the volume, [...] partly because her literary-critical, biographical and essayistic career shared so much ground with his.'Freya Johnston, New Rambler

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Book SynopsisThe evolution of Latin American literature. A Companion to Latin American Literature offers a lively and informative introduction to the most significant literary works produced in Latin America from the fifteenth century until the present day. It shows how the press, and its product the printed word, functioned as the common denominator binding together, in different ways over time, the complex and variable relationship between the writer, the reader and the state. The meandering story of the evolution of Latin American literature - from the letters of discovery written by Christopher Columbus and Vaz de Caminha, via the Republican era at the end of the nineteenth century when writers in Rio de Janeiro as much as inBuenos Aires were beginning to live off their pens as journalists and serial novelists, until the 1960s when writers of the quality of Clarice Lispector in Brazil and García Márquez in Colombia suddenly burst onto the world stage- is traced chronologically in six chapters which introduce the main writers in the main genres of poetry, prose, the novel, drama, and the essay. A final chapter evaluates the post-boom novel, testimonio, Latino and Brazuca literature, gay, Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian literature, along with the Novel of the New Millennium. This study also offers suggestions for further reading. STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies, UniversityCollege London, and Profesor Honorario, Universidad de San Marcos, Lima.Trade Review[Its] range is extremely impressive. [...] Orients and incites curiosity while mapping an immense terrain. * TLS *Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Unpacking the Canon The Amerindian Legacy, and the Literature of Discovery and Conquest Colonial and Viceregal Literature Early Nineteenth-Century Literature Late Nineteenth-Century Literature Early Twentieth-Century Literature Late Twentieth-Century Literature Some Postmodern Developments

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Book SynopsisAn essential chronological framework for students of Portuguese literature. This companion volume offers an introduction to European Portuguese literature for university-level readers. It consists of a chronological overview of Portuguese literature from the twelfth century to the present day, by some ofthe most distinguished literary scholars of recent years, leading into substantial essays centred on major authors, genres or periods, and a study of the history of translations. It does not attempt an encyclopaedic coverage of Portuguese literature, but provides essential chronological and bibliographical information on all major authors and genres, with more extensive treatment of key works and literary figures, and a particular focus on the modern period. It is unashamedly canonical rather than thematic in its examination of central authors and periods, without neglecting female writers. In this way it provides basic reference materials for students beginning the study of Portuguese literature, and for a wider audience looking for general or specific information. The editors have made a principled decision to exclude both Brazilian and African literature, which demand separate treatment. STEPHEN PARKINSON, CLAUDIA PAZOS ALONSO and T. F. EARLE are all members of the Sub-Faculty of Portuguese at the University of Oxford. CONTRIBUTORS: Vanda Anastácio, Helena Carvalhao Buescu, Rip Cohen, T. F. Earle, David Frier,Luís Gomes, Mariana Gray de Castro, Helder Macedo, Patricia Odber de Baubeta, Hilary Owen, Stephen Parkinson, Cláudia Pazos Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Teresa Pinto Coelho, Phillip Rothwell, Mark Sabine, Claire Williams, Clive Willis.Trade Review[E]specially appropriate for undergraduate or graduate students seeking a basic secondary source on Portuguese literature in overview courses or for those studying on their own [...] a welcome and much-needed reference source that unassumingly and yet effectively introduces the canon to the nonspecialist reader. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *A remarkably inspired and personalized introduction to the unattainable task of contextualizing perfectly the totality of Portuguese literary history. [...] It is unabashedly canonical yet revisionary, at once unassumingly authoritative and entertaining, resourceful and pleasantly concise [and] will satisfy both the novice and the scholar, and is bound to become an essential reference for advanced students of Portuguese, Lusophone, and comparative literatures. * ELLIPSIS *Parkinson, Companion, is an essential volume for libraries, students and academics alike, covering Portugal's major literary periods. * YEAR'S WORK IN MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES *An important work which complements existing literature and fills a gap in the market. For an academic library serving the needs of a Portuguese department this is a recommended purchase. * REFERENCE REVIEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Stephen Parkinson Introduction - Thomas F Earle and Cláudia Pazos Alonso Eight Centuries of Portuguese Literature: An Overview - Helder Macedo The Medieval Galician-Portuguese Lyric - Rip Cohen and Stephen Parkinson Fernao Lopes and Portuguese Prose Writing of the Middle Ages - Stephen Parkinson Portuguese Theatre in the Sixteenth Century: Gil Vicente and António Ferreira - Juliet Perkins and Thomas F Earle The Lusiads and the Literature of Portuguese Overseas Expansion - Clive Willis Lyric Poetry in the Sixteenth Century - Thomas F Earle The Seventeenth Century - Luís Gomes The Eighteenth Century - Vanda Anastacio Almeida Garrett: Founder of Modern Portuguese Literature - Helena Buescu The Transition from Romanticism to Realism - David Frier Eça de Queirós: A European Writer - Teresa Pinto Coelho Fernando Pessoa and the Modernist Generation - Mariana Gray de Castro Narrative and Drama during the Dictatorship - Phillip Rothwell Women Writers up to 1974 - Hilary Owen and Cláudia Pazos Alonso Writing after the Dictatorship - Mark Sabine and Claire Williams Portuguese Literature in English Translation - Pat Odber

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Book SynopsisThe first and only guide in English to the influential body of Catalan literature, from the middle ages to the present day. This book is the only one of its kind in English. Part literary history, part literary criticism, it is above all a personal assessment of a rich and important body of work which is still not widely known outside Catalonia. Catalan literature, one of the three major Peninsular literatures, reached an impressive level of excellence in the middle ages, beginning with Ramon Llull and the chronicles, and culminating in the two great fifteenth-century writers,the poet Ausiàs March and Joanot Martorell, the author of Tirant lo Blanc, one of the landmarks in early prose fiction. After three centuries of relative eclipse, the nineteenth-century Renaixença produced a distinctive version of Romanticism with notable achievements in poetry, theatre and the novel. More recently, Catalan writers have successfully assimilated a number of international tendencies, from Symbolism to Surrealism, while remaining deeply aware of the possibilities of the Catalan language itself. After the cultural disruption caused by the Civil War of 1936-39 and its aftermath, Catalan literature has once again shown its capacity for self-renewal,and the present literary scene is one of great interest and originality. The book does not presuppose any knowledge of Catalan; all quotations and book titles are translated, and a list of works translated into English is included. ARTHUR TERRY is Emeritus Professor of Literature at the University of Essex. Este libro queda sin paralelo en inglés. Una combinación de historia y crítica literarias, es ante todo una valoración personal de una literatura rica e importante que todavía queda poco conocida fuera de Cataluña. La literatura catalana consiguió un nivel de excelencia impresionante en la Edad Media y, a partir de su restablecimiento a principios del siglo diecinueve, ha demostrado una capacidad extraordinaria de autorenovación que todavía persiste hoy en día. Este libro no presupone saber catalán; cada cita y título de libro queda traducido, y se incluye una lista de obrastraducidas al inglés.Trade ReviewOffers a comprehensive survey from its first beginnings to the twenty-first century. * WORLD LITERATURE TODAY *Impressive synthesis and guide... Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsMedieval and Early Renaissance Decadence and Enlightenment The Nineteenth Century The Twentieth Century The Present Epilogue

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Book SynopsisAn introduction to one of Latin America's most important authors. Jorge Luis Borges is one of the key writers of the twentieth century in the context of both Hispanic and world literature. This Companion has been designed for keen readers of Borges whether they approach him in English orSpanish, within or outside a university context. It takes his stories and essays of the forties and fifties, especially Ficciones and El Aleph, to be his most significant works, and organizes its material in consequence. About two thirds of the book analyzes the stories of this period text by text. The early sections map Borges's intellectual trajectory up to the fifties in some detail, and up to his death more briefly. They aim to provide anaccount of the context which will allow the reader maximum access to the meaning and significance of his work and present a biographical narrative developed against the Argentine literary world in which Borges was a key player, the Argentine intellectual tradition in its historical context, and the Argentine and world politics to which his works respond in more or less obvious ways. STEVEN BOLDY is Reader in Latin American Literature at the University of Cambridge.Trade ReviewThe historical overview introducing the companion is detailed and certainly helpful for further study in contextualizing Borges. * GLASGOW REVIEW OF BOOKS *This will undoubtedly be a book that students will find useful [...] clearly written and informative, in company with the Fishburn and Hughes Dictionary of Borges: it is a worthy addition to the basic critical bibliography on Borges in English. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *El libro de Boldy ofrece un panorama compacto sobre la vida y la obra del autor, y seguro que es interesante para estudiantes y demás lectores que quieran informarse de una forma rápida y general. * IBEROAMERICANA *Table of ContentsPerspectives Family History, National History Life and Literature Metaphysics, the Cult of Courage From Book Review to Fiction: "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"

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Book SynopsisAn essential chronological framework for students of Portuguese literature. This companion volume offers an introduction to European Portuguese literature for university-level readers. It consists of a chronological overview of Portuguese literature from the twelfth century to the present day, by some ofthe most distinguished literary scholars of recent years, leading into substantial essays centred on major authors, genres or periods, and a study of the history of translations. It does not attempt an encyclopaedic coverage of Portuguese literature, but provides essential chronological and bibliographical information on all major authors and genres, with more extensive treatment of key works and literary figures, and a particular focus on the modern period. It is unashamedly canonical rather than thematic in its examination of central authors and periods, without neglecting female writers. In this way it provides basic reference materials for students beginning the study of Portuguese literature, and for a wider audience looking for general or specific information. The editors have made a principled decision to exclude both Brazilian and African literature, which demand separate treatment. STEPHEN PARKINSON, CLAUDIA PAZOS ALONSO and T. F. EARLE are all members of the Sub-Faculty of Portuguese at the University of Oxford. CONTRIBUTORS: Vanda Anastácio, Helena Carvalhao Buescu, Rip Cohen, T. F. Earle, David Frier,Luís Gomes, Mariana Gray de Castro, Helder Macedo, Patricia Odber de Baubeta, Hilary Owen, Stephen Parkinson, Cláudia Pazos Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Teresa Pinto Coelho, Phillip Rothwell, Mark Sabine, Claire Williams, Clive Willis.Trade Review[E]specially appropriate for undergraduate or graduate students seeking a basic secondary source on Portuguese literature in overview courses or for those studying on their own [...] a welcome and much-needed reference source that unassumingly and yet effectively introduces the canon to the nonspecialist reader. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *A remarkably inspired and personalized introduction to the unattainable task of contextualizing perfectly the totality of Portuguese literary history. [...] It is unabashedly canonical yet revisionary, at once unassumingly authoritative and entertaining, resourceful and pleasantly concise [and] will satisfy both the novice and the scholar, and is bound to become an essential reference for advanced students of Portuguese, Lusophone, and comparative literatures. * ELLIPSIS *Parkinson, Companion, is an essential volume for libraries, students and academics alike, covering Portugal's major literary periods. * YEAR'S WORK IN MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES *An important work which complements existing literature and fills a gap in the market. For an academic library serving the needs of a Portuguese department this is a recommended purchase. * REFERENCE REVIEWS *

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Book SynopsisThis volume presents a series of in-depth studies of particular authors or specific aspects of Germany in Canadian literature and culture, present and past. Individual investigations resonate with each other, adding up to a larger picture of Canada's views on Germany and things German in all their richness, complexity and historical persistence.

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Book SynopsisAfter the veritable hype concerning postmodernism in the 1980s and early 1990s, when questions about when it began, what it means and which texts it comprises were apt to trigger heated discussions, the excitement has notably cooled down at the turn of the century. Voices are now beginning to be heard which seem to suggest a new episteme in the making which points beyond postmodernism, while it remains at the same time very uncertain whether what appears as newness is not rather a return to traditional concepts, theoretical premises, and authorial practices. Contributors to this volume propose to explore new openings and recent developments in anglophone literatures and cultural theories which engage with issues seen to be central in the construction of a postmodern paradigm, but deal with them in ways that promise new openings or a new Zeitgeist.Table of ContentsThe Persistence of the Modernist Heritage Peter V. Zima, Why the Postmodern Age Will Last? · Philip Tew, A New Sense of Reality? A New Sense of the Text? ExploringMeta-Realism and the Literary Critical Field · Lena Petrovic, Hear the Voice of the Artist: Postmodernism as Faustian Bargain · Bernd Klähn, The Threefold Way: About the Heuristics and Paradigmatics of (Post)Modernist Culture and Literature · Peter Paul Schnierer, Modernist at Best: Poeticitiy and Tradition in Hyperpoetry · Doris Teske, Beyond Postmodernist Thirdspace? - The Internet in a Post-Postmodern World Re-Reading Postmodernism Christophe Den Tandt , Pragmatic Commitments: Postmodern realism in Don DeLillo, Maxine Hong Kingston and James Ellroy· Christopher Norris, Why Derrida is not a Postmodernist? · Helga Thalhofer, Paradox vs. Analogy: De Man and Foucault · Peter Mortensen, 'Civilization's Fear of Nature': Postmodernity, Culture, and Environment in The God of Small Things Beyond Posmodernism Ihab Hassan, Beyond Postmodernism: Toward an Aesthetic of Trust · Klaus Stierstorfer, Wobbly Grounds: Postmodernism's Precarious Footholds in Novels by Bradbury, Parker, Rushdie, Swift · Vera Nünning , Beyond Indifference: New Departures in British Fiction at the Turn of the 21st Century· Dietmar Böhnke, Shades of Gray: The Peculiar Postmodernism of Alasdair Gray · VictoriaLipina-Berezkina, American Postmodernist Literature at the Turn of the Millenium: the Death and Return of the Subject · Susanne Peters, The Anglo-Irish Playwright Martin McDonagh: Postmodernist Zeitgeist as Cliché and a (Re)turn to the Voice of Common Sense · Laurenz Volkmann, Extension of the Battle Zone: Ian McEwan's Cult Novel The Cement Garden

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Book SynopsisJames Macphersons Ossian zählt im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert zu den wichtigsten Werken der Weltliteratur. Dabei stilisiert man den keltischen Barden zum "Homer des Nordens" (Madame de Staël) und seine Poesie zur "Mutter der Romantik" (Uhland, Jean Paul). Indem Ossian mit 'süßer Wehmut' auf die Vergangenheit zurückblickt und die Distanz zum Ideal ästhetisch kompensiert, stellt er zugleich das'Urbild' des sentimentalischen Dichters dar. Die vorliegende Arbeit unternimmt erstmals eine Gesamtdarstellung der deutschen "Ossianomanie" und macht wichtiges Textmaterial zugänglich. Grundlage hierfür bietet eine poststrukturalistische Vermittlung wirkungsästhetischer und diskursanalytischer Modelle. Band 1 behandelt die Poems of Ossian, die zeitgenössischen Diskurse sowie die Frühphase der Rezeption; Band 2 befasst sich mit der Haupt- und der Spätphase der Rezeption. Die Bände 3 und 4 präsentieren die rezeptionssteuernden deutschen Übersetzungen sowie die wichtigsten Rezeptionszeugen.

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Book SynopsisJames Macphersons Ossian zählt im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert zu den wichtigsten Werken der Weltliteratur. Dabei stilisiert man den keltischen Barden zum "Homer des Nordens" (Madame de Staël) und seine Poesie zur "Mutter der Romantik" (Uhland, Jean Paul). Indem Ossian mit 'süßer Wehmut' auf die Vergangenheit zurückblickt und die Distanz zum Ideal ästhetisch kompensiert, stellt er zugleich das'Urbild' des sentimentalischen Dichters dar. Die vorliegende Arbeit unternimmt erstmals eine Gesamtdarstellung der deutschen "Ossianomanie" und macht wichtiges Textmaterial zugänglich. Grundlage hierfür bietet eine poststrukturalistische Vermittlung wirkungsästhetischer und diskursanalytischer Modelle. Band 1 behandelt die Poems of Ossian, die zeitgenössischen Diskurse sowie die Frühphase der Rezeption; Band 2 befasst sich mit der Haupt- und der Spätphase der Rezeption. Die Bände 3 und 4 präsentieren die rezeptionssteuernden deutschen Übersetzungen sowie die wichtigsten Rezeptionszeugen.

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Book SynopsisIm Zentrum des Buches steht die Rekonstruktion der Debatte, die im Europa des späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts um die Idee des Kosmopolitismus geführt wurde. Am Beispiel von Rousseau, Kant, Jean Paul, Eichendorff u.a. wird gezeigt, dass man das 18. Jahrhundert zwar zu Recht als ein weltbürgerliches Jahrhundert bezeichnen, dabei aber nicht von einer homogenen Weltbürgeridee ausgehen kann. Mit den Methoden der historisch-semantischen Diskursanalyse wird die bereits um 1800 erfolgende spektrale Aufspaltung des Weltbürgerdiskurses nachgezeichnet und vor dem Hintergrund konkurrierender politischer, moralischer und rechtlicher Interessen interpretiert. Das um 1800 entstandene, kontroverse weltbürgliche Argumentationsrepertoire bestimmt bis heute die etwa von Jacques Derrida und Jürgen Habermas geführten Diskussionen um Globalisierung und Internationalität.

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Book SynopsisThe volume presents a collection of studies by internationally acknowledged medievalists on the phenomenon of laughter and its literary, social and emotional functions in the Middle Ages. The papers investigate the forms and representations of laughter in medieval literature and society and inquire into its role in the creation of communities and the depiction of figures in fictional texts.Table of ContentsWerner Röcke / Hans Rudolf Velten: Einleitung I. Soziale Grenzziehungen und Funktionen gemeinschaftlichen Gelächters Gerd Althoff: Vom Lächeln zum Verlachen; Thomas Scharff: Lachen über die Ketzer. Religiöse Devianz und Gelächter im Hochmittelalter; Hildegard Elisabeth Keller: Lachen und Lachresistenz. Noahs Söhne in der Genesisepik, der Biblia Pauperum und dem Donaueschinger Passionsspiel; Werner Röcke: Die getauschten Blinden. Gelächter und Gewalt gegen Randgruppen in der Literatur des Mittelalters II. Konstruktionen textueller Lachgemeinschaften Frank Wittchow: Prekäre Gemeinschaften. Inklusives und exklusives Lachen bei Horaz und Vergil; Klaus Grubmüller: Wer lacht im Märe - und wozu?; Hans Rudolf Velten: Text und Lachgemeinschaft. Zur Funktion des Gruppenlachens bei Hofe in der Schwankliteratur; Gerhard Wolf: "das die herren was zu lachen hetten". Lachgemeinschaften im südwestdeutschen Adel? III. Public Staging of Laughter / Theatrale Inszenierungen des Lachens Bernhard Teuber: Das Lachen der Troubadours. Zur performativen Kraft satirischer Dichtung im mittelalterlichen Occitanien; Stephen G. Nichols: Four Principles of Laughter in Medieval Farce; Jelle Koopmans: Le rire grinçant de la farce. Factions et exclusions dans le monde du théâtre profane français (1450-1550); Jens Roselt: Chips und Schiller. Lachgemeinschaften im zeitgenössischen Theater und ihre historischen Voraussetzungen IV. Institutionalized Laughter / Institutionalisierte Lachgemeinschaften Herman Pleij: Institutionalized Laughter in Dutch Literature and Society during the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period; Katja Gvozdeva: Narrenabtei. Rituelle und literarische Inszenierungen einer Lachinstitution V. Soziale Stilisierungen in der Karikatur Malcolm Jones: No laughing matter? Die Wiederentdeckung der komischen Flugblätter aus dem England des 17. Jahrhunderts; Helga Kotthoff: Konversationelle Karikaturen. Über Selbst- und Fremdstilisierungen in Alltagsgesprächen

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Book SynopsisThis collected volume deals with the literary representation of dreams in central texts from European Romanticism. The papers provide new insights into the links between literature and anthropological discourse by illuminating the interplay between Romantic psychology and literary fiction that makes dreams exemplary objects of a poetic science of humanity.Table of ContentsPeter-André Alt: Romantische Traumtexte und das Wissen der Literatur; I. Literaturgeschichtliche Verortungen Albert Meier: Zeugung im Schlaf. Die Erzählbarkeit des Traums in romantischer Poesie; Harro Müller-Michaels: Von der Notwendigkeit der Träume für die Bildung des Menschen. Programme und Beispiele für eine ganzheitliche Bildung um 1800; Monika Schmitz-Emans: Redselige Träume. Über Traum und Sprache bei Jean Paul im Kontext des europäischen Romans; II. Traum und poetischer Text Detlef Kremer: Traum als Präfiguration, topologische Schwelle und Verdichtung des romantischen Textes; Gerhard Lauer: Hoffmanns Träume. Über den Wahrheitsanspruch erzählter Träume; Christiane Leiteritz: Zur poetischen Funktion des Traums bei Coleridge, Novalis und Nodier; Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa: "In mir ist ein Tummelplatz von Gesichten". Traum und Brief bei Bettine von Armin III. Anthropologische, psychologische und kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte Helmut Pfotenhauer: Gesichte an den Rändern des Traumes. E.T.A. Hoffmanns Poetik der Halbschlafbilder; Rolf-Peter Janz: Schwindel und Traum. Zwei Ausnahmezustände des Subjekts bei Kleist; Alexander Košenina: Vorbewußtsein und Traum in Kleists Anthropologie; Hans Richard Brittnacher: Traumwissen und Prophezeiung. Zigeunerinnen als Hüterinnen mantischer Weisheit IV. Spiegelungen und Wirkungen Walter Hinderer: "Die Träume sind vielleicht unsere höchste Philosophie": Bemerkungen zum Traumdiskurs Ludwig Tiecks; Matthias Luserke: "Fernsehen im Träumen". Über Mörikes Beschäftigung mit der romantischen Traumtheorie; Bettina Gruber: Romantische Psychoanalyse? Freud, C.G. Jung und die Traumtheorien der Romantik

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Book SynopsisIn medieval and early modern times, scribes, painters, illustrators, translators and authors obviously had specific ideas of what was meant by fidelity to the original; the modern observer frequently regards their transfers as imprecise and wilful. It would, however, be too simple to speak of a 'typically medieval' manner of reproduction. The papers in this volume show that the only sensible approach is to differentiate between the various forms and concepts of reproduction in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age. The interdisciplinarity of this volume results in a complex picture that brings out the different nature of medieval 'transfers' because it considers the particularity of each case. The volume sees itself as a contribution to a cultural history of artistic reproduction.

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Book SynopsisThe forms of expression of the emotions in medieval literature are subject to different social, communicative, and aesthetic conditions than those obtaining in the modern age. Using exemplars of the sentimental medieval love romance, this study draws out processes of historical change in the conventions governing the expression of emotions.

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Book SynopsisIm spätantiken Gallien entstanden zwischen dem vierten und achten Jahrhundert annähernd fünfzig hagiographische Dossiers. Der nach dem Mönchsbischof von Tours benannte ‚Martinellus‘ war das größte und wirkungsmächtigste Dossier. Das in der Vita des Sulpicius Severus vorgestellte Leitbild wirkte über Aquitanien, Gallien und das Merowingerreich hinaus auf die gesamte europäische Kultur. Die Beobachtung, dass die Vita einer bestimmten Persönlichkeit immer wieder umgeschrieben wurde, hat zu der Überlegung geführt, daß es einen Zusammenhang von „Biographie und Epochenstil“ gebe. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird gezeigt, dass derselbe Martinsstoff nicht nur immer neuer Gestaltung bedurfte, um für die jeweilige Epoche seine ganze Kraft entfalten zu können, sondern worauf jenseits dieses Wandels die übergreifende Einheit des Leitbilds beruht.

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Book SynopsisDie Weisheit des Silen umspielt das Motiv der Misere des menschlichen Lebens. Mit dem Werk des englischen Dichters Lord Byron ist es zu einer zentralen Denkfigur geworden, die Literatur und Künste in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts in vielfacher Weise grundiert hat. Heinrich Heines Variationen des Themas reichen von seinem Frühwerk bis in die spätesten Dichtungen. Die Weisheit des Silen ist ihm stets Gegenbild und Anreiz zu jenem „Lebensbankett“, mit dem er das Ziel seines gesellschaftspolitischen Engagements begründet. Diese Studie stellt Heines Werk erstmals umfassend in den Horizont der Pariser Literatur- und Kunstszene der Zeit. Im Vergleich mit literarischen Werken (Byron, Cervantes, Gautier, Nerval, Balzac, Musset, Banville, Lamartine, Baudelaire usw.) legt sie ein bewusstseinsgeschichtliches Fundament frei, das bis weit in die Moderne fortgewirkt hat. Heines Wertschätzung der bildenden Kunst (Murillo, Decamps, Robert, Delaroche, Delacroix usw.) und der darstellenden Künste (Ballett, Pantomime, Commedia dell'arte) wurzelt in der Poetik eines ausgesprochen ‚malerischen Stils‘ (Victor Hugo). Der Supernaturalismus – nicht sowohl Stilform, als vielmehr Ausweis einer kognitiven Differenz – ist der Schlüssel zu einem Kunstverständnis, das beständig zwischen l'art-pour-l'art und politischem Engagement zu oszillieren scheint.

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Book SynopsisIn its series of publications on Classicism and Modernism the Foundation of Weimar Classics presents the fruits of its transdisciplinary academic research into European cultural history since 1750. The starting point is provided by the Age of Goethe and Schiller, which is perceived as the formative phase of aesthetic modernism. Internationally renowned scholars working from different perspectives illuminate those cultural historical traditions which were founded in the epochal historical context of Weimar Classicism and persist right up to debates in the present day.

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Book SynopsisMagic realism has become a significant mode of expression in Jewish cultural production. This special focus of Symbolism for the first time explores in a comparative and transnational approach the magic realist engagement of Jewish writers, artists, and filmmakers from the Diaspora and from Israel with issues of identity, oppression and persecution as well as the Holocaust.

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Book SynopsisFar from teleological historiography, the pan-European perspective on Early Modern drama offered in this volume provides answers to why, how, where and when the given phenomena of theatre appear in history. Using theories of circulation and other concepts of exchange, transfer and movement, the authors analyze the development and differentiation of European secular and religious drama, within the disciplinary framework of comparative literature and the history of literature and concepts. Within this frame, aspects of major interest are the relationship between tradition and innovation, the status of genre, the proportion of autonomous and heteronomous creational dispositions within the artefacts or genres they belong to, as well as strategies of functionalization in the context of a given part of the cultural net. Contributions cover a broad range of topics, including poetics of Early Modern Drama; political, institutional and social practices; history of themes and motifs (Stoffgeschichte); history of genres/cross-fertilization between genres; textual traditions and distribution of texts; questions of originality and authorship; theories of circulation and net structures in Drama Studies.

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Book SynopsisAristotle’s neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics, ch. 9), historians and playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past – arguably since Antiquity, but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges historiographers to differentiate their “emplotments” (White) from literary inventions, this thirteen-essay collection takes a fresh look at the production of historico-political knowledge in literature and the intricacies of reality and fiction. Written by experts who teach in Germany, Austria, Russia, and the United States, the articles provide a thorough interpretation of early modern drama (with a view to classical times and the 19th century) as an ideological platform that is as open to royal self-fashioning and soteriology as it is to travestying and subverting the means and ends of historical interpretation. The comparative analysis of metapoetic and historiosophic aspects also sheds light on drama as a transnational phenomenon, demonstrating the importance of the cultural net that links the multifaceted textual examples from France, Russia, England, Italy, and the Netherlands.

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