Comparative literature Books

Book SynopsisA much-needed look at the fiction that was actually read by masses of Germans in the late nineteenth century, and the conditions of its publication and reception. The late nineteenth century was a crucial period for the development of German fiction. Political unification and industrialization were accompanied by the rise of a mass market for German literature, and with it the beginnings ofthe German bestseller.Offering escape, romance, or adventure, as well as insights into the modern world, nineteenth-century bestsellers often captured the imagination of readers well into the twentieth century and beyond. However, many have been neglected by scholars. This volume offers new readings of literary realism by focusing not on the accepted intellectual canon but on commercially successful fiction in its material and social contexts. It investigates bestsellers from writers such as Freytag, Dahn, Jensen, Raabe, Viebig, Stifter, Auerbach, Storm, Möllhausen, Marlitt, Suttner, and Thomas Mann. The contributions examine the aesthetic strategies that made the works sucha success, and writers' attempts to appeal simultaneously on different levels to different readers. Bestselling writers often sought to accommodate the expectations of publishers and the marketplace, while preserving some sense ofartistic integrity. This volume sheds light on the important effect of the mass market on the writing not just of popular works, but of German prose fiction on all levels. Contributors: Christiane Arndt, Caroline Bland, Elizabeth Boa, Anita Bunyan, Katrin Kohl, Todd Kontje, Peter C. Pfeiffer, Nicholas Saul, Benedict Schofield, Ernest Schonfield, Martin Swales, Charlotte Woodford. Charlotte Woodford is Lecturer in German and Directorof Studies in Modern Languages at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Benedict Schofield is Senior Lecturer in German and Head of the Department of German at King's College London.Trade Review[T]akes a fresh and highly productive look at German best-selling novels and novellas written between the 1840s and the early 1900s. It combines sociohistorical enquiry into the history of literary writing, publishing, and reading with a particular focus on 'the fertile crossover between so-called high literature and works written for the mass market.' . . . The twelve chapters . . . written by established Germanists as well as younger researchers, are well researched and thoughtful almost throughout. Many are highly successful in combining socio-historical enquiry with in-depth literary analysis. --Dirk Göttsche, * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[F]ascinating . . . . In her excellent introduction, Charlotte Woodford draws attention to the production and distribution of literature in the nineteenth century as well as to the rapid growth of subscription libraries. The serialisation of longer fiction was also an important factor in bringing literature to a wider and broader-based audience. All these factors are taken up . . . by Benedict Schofield, [Woodford's] co-editor, and the other ten contributors to the volume. * JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES *Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *Handsomely produced and expertly edited . . . . The essays are often fascinating and always informative. The best of them make their arguments against the forgetting of their once-bestselling authors exciting. They share a passion for getting to the bottom of why, in or outside Germany, we know so little about books that were, in the main, not just flashes in the pan, as they often endured for up to a century. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT [P]resents a fresh look at late-nineteenth-century realist ?ction by examining the 'fertile crossover between so-called high literature and works written for the mass market' (1). [D]emonstrates an exceptional breadth . . . . [T]his impressive collection will surely inject new energy into nineteenth-century scholarship. . . . [I]ts unique focus on poetics provides a welcome complement to recent scholarship such as Publishing Culture and the 'Reading Nation' (edited by Lynne Tatlock, [Camden House], 2010). * MONATSHEFTE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: German Fiction and the Marketplace in the Nineteenth Century - Charlotte Woodford Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben: Politics, Aesthetics, and the Bestseller - Benedict Schofield Felix Dahn's Ein Kampf um Rom: Historical Fiction as Melodrama - Todd Kontje Wilhelm Jensen and Wilhelm Raabe: Literary Value, Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Competition in the Marketplace - Nicholas Saul Clara Viebig: Using the Genres of Heimatkunst und Großstadtroman to Create Bestselling Novels - Caroline Bland Buddenbrooks as Bestseller - Ernest Schonfield Homeliness and Otherness: Reflections on Stifter's Bergkristall - Martin Swales Berthold Auerbach's Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten: Political and Religious Contexts of a Nineteenth-Century Bestseller - Anita Bunyan Theodor Storm's Der Schimmelreiter: Schauerralismus or Gothic Realism in the Family Periodical - Christiane Arndt Selling the Experience of the New World: Balduin Möllhausen's Novellistic Imagination of America - Peter Pfeiffer E. Marlitt's Bestselling Poetics - Katrin Kohl Bertha von Suttner's Die Waffen nieder! and Gabriele Reuter's Aus guter Familie: Sentimentality and Social Criticism - Charlotte Woodford Taking Sex to Market: Tagebuch einer Verlorenen: Von einerToten and Josefine Mutzenbacher, Die Lebensgeschichte einer wienerischen Dirne, von ihr selbst erzählt - Elizabeth Boa Works Cited Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisFirst comprehensive look at how today's German literary fiction deals with questions of German victimhood. In recent years it has become much more accepted in Germany to consider aspects of the Second World War in which Germans were not perpetrators, but victims: the Allied bombing campaign, expulsions of "ethnic" Germans, mass rapes of German women, and postwar internment and persecution. An explosion of literary fiction on these topics has accompanied this trend. Sebald's The Air War and Literature and Grass's Crabwalk are key texts, but there are many others; the great majority seek not to revise German responsibility for the Holocaust but to balance German victimhood and German perpetration. This book of essays is the first in English to examine closely the variety ofthese texts. An opening section on the 1950s -- a decade of intense literary engagement with German victimhood before the focus shifted to German perpetration -- provides context, drawing parallels but also noting differences between the immediate postwar period and today. The second section focuses on key texts written since the mid-1990s shifts in perspectives on the Nazi past, on perpetration and victimhood, on "ordinary Germans," and on the balance between historical empathy and condemnation. Contributors: Karina Berger, Elizabeth Boa, Stephen Brockmann, David Clarke, Mary Cosgrove, Rick Crownshaw, Helen Finch, Frank Finlay, Katharina Hall, Colette Lawson, Caroline Schaumann, Helmut Schmitz, Kathrin Schödel, and Stuart Taberner. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society at the University of Leeds. Karina Berger holds a PhD in German from the University of Leeds.Trade Review[A]n impressive testament to collaborative research. The . . . essays . . . all offer highly stimulating discussions of individual texts and topics, and can be read as self-contained pieces, but the book is far more than the sum of its parts: the coherence of its argument suggests not only masterly editing, but also the real benefits of scholars with related interests working together over an extended period. [This book] will be of interest to students, specialists, and general readers alike, and given the implications of the topic, deserves the widest possible audience. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *Contributes to a growing body of research on the evolution of memory politics in post-unification Germany... Adds important inflections to current debates... Important, thought-provoking, and fittingly nuanced. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *The individual essays make a compelling and well-conceived contribution to an important and on-going discussion that in the ten years of its existence has gained in nuance and sophistication. * MONATSHEFTE *Provides a valuable overview about the range and complexity of literary accounts on 'German suffering. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Provocative yet accessible to a wide audience. * CHOICE *The volume adds support to the argument that the notion of 'German victims' did not begin with the fall of the Berlin Wall. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Clearly structured, with a common theme that gives the work cohesion.... Will certainly stimulate academic debate and scholarship for years to come. * H-NET GERMAN *Has an impressive array of contributions. . . . [C]ertainly demonstrates the complexities of the current debates. * THIS YEAR'S WORK IN MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Stuart Taberner and Karina Berger W. G. Sebald and German Wartime Suffering - Stephen Brockmann The Natural History of Destruction: W. G. Sebald, Gert Ledig, and the Allied Bombings - Colette Lawson Expulsion Novels of the 1950s: More than Meets the Eye? - Karina Berger "In this prison of the guard room": Heinrich Böll's Briefe aus dem Krieg 1939-1945 in the Context of Contemporary Debates - Frank Finlay Family, Heritage, and German Wartime Suffering in Hanns-Josef Ortheil, Stephan Wackwitz, Thomas Medicus, Dagmar Leupold, and Uwe Timm - Helmut Schmitz Lost Heimat in Generational Novels by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, and Angelika Overath - Elizabeth Boa "A Different Family Story": German Wartime Suffering in Women's Writing by Wibke Bruhns, Ute Scheub, and Christina von Braun - Caroline Schaumann The Place of German Wartime Suffering in Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Family Texts - David Clarke "Why only now?": The Representation of German Wartime Suffering as a "Memory Taboo" in Günter Grass's Novella Im Krebsgang - Katharina Hall Rereading Der Vorleser, Remembering the Perpetrator - Rick Crownshaw Narrating German Suffering in the Shadow of Holocaust Victimology: W. G. Sebald, Contemporary Trauma Theory, and Dieter Forte's Air Raids Epic - Mary Cosgrove Günter Grass's Account of German Wartime Suffering in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel: Mind in Mourning or Boy Adventurer? - Helen Finch Jackboots and Jeans: The Private and the Political in Uwe Timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders - Frank Finlay Memory-Work in Recent German Novels: What (if Any) Limits Remain on Empathy with the "German Experience" of the Second World War? - Stuart Taberner "Secondary Suffering" and Victimhood: The "Other" of German Identity in Bernhard Schlink's "Die Beschneidung" and Maxim Biller's "Harlem Holocaust" - Kathrin Schodel

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Book SynopsisA refreshing new interdisciplinary slant on magical realism as an international literary phenomenon emerging from the trauma of colonial dispossession. Companion to Magical Realism provides an assessment of the world-wide impact of a movement which was incubated in Germany, flourished in Latin America and then spread to the rest of the world. It provides a set of up-to-date assessments of the work of writers traditionally associated with magical realism such as Gabriel García Márquez [in particular his recently published memoirs], Alejo Carpentier, Miguel ngel Asturias, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende,Laura Esquivel and Salman Rushdie, as well as bringing into the fold new authors such as W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, José Saramago, Dorit Rabinyan, Ovid, María Luisa Bombal, Ibrahim al-Kawni, Mayra Montero, Nakagami Kenji, José Eustasio Rivera and Elias Khoury, discussed for the first time in the context of magical realism. Written in a jargon-free style, and with all quotations translated into English, this book offers a refreshing new interdisciplinary slant on magical realism as an international literary phenomenon emerging from the trauma of colonial dispossession. The companion also has a Guide to Further Reading. Stephen Hart is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College London and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru. Wen-chin Ouyang lectures in Arabic Literature and Comparative Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies,London.Trade ReviewThis companion is a valuable, updated and much needed consolidation of magical realism scholarship. * JILAS~ JOURNAL OF IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES *Insightful [and] essential. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Globalization of Magical Realism: New Poltics of Aesthetics [with Wen-chin Ouyang] - Introduction: Globalization of Magical Realism: New Politics of Aesthetics [with Stephen M Hart] - Wen-Chin Ouyang Section I: Introduction: Genealogies, Myths, Archives - Swords and Silver Rings: Magical Objects in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez - Lois Parkinson Zamora The Presence of Myth in Borges, Carpentier, Asturias, Rulfo and García Márquez - Donald L Shaw The Earth as Archive in Bombal, Parra, Asturias and Rulfo [with Julia King] - Alejo Carpentier's Re-invention of América Latin as Real and Marvellous - The Golden Age Myth in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ovid's Metamorphoses - Lorna Robinson Lessons from the Golden Age in Gabriel García Márquez's Living to Tell the Tale - Efraín Kristal Section II: Introduction: History, Nightmare, Fantasy - History and the Fantastic in José Saramago's Fiction - David Henn Magical-Realist Elements in José Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex - Humberto Nuñez-Faraco Beyond Magic Realism in The Red of His Shadow by Marya Montero - Alejandra Rengifo Cops, Robbers, and Anarcho-terrorists: Crime and Magical Realism's Jewish Question - J F Friedenthal Flights of Fancy: Angela Carter's Transgressive Narratives - Sarah Sceats Section III: Introduction: The Politics of Magic - Wen-Chin Ouyang Humour and Magical Realism in El reino de este mundo - Evelyn Fishburn Magical Realism and Children's Literature: Isabel Allende's La Ciudad de las Bestias - Philip Swanson Unsavoury Representations in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate - Helene Price Not so Innocent - An Israeli Tale of Subversion: Dorit Rabinyan's Persian Brides - Tsila Ratner Magical Realism as Ideology: Narrative Evasions in the Work of Nakagami Kenji - Mark Morris Legend, Fantasy and the Birth of the New in `Los funerales de la Mamá Grande by Gabriel García Márquez - Robin Fiddian Section IV: Introduction: Empire, Nation, Magic - Wen-Chin Ouyang Magical Nationalism, Lyric Poetry and the Marvellous: W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney - Johnathan Allison Empire and Tribal Magic in a Tuareg Epic: Ibrahim al-Kuni's Lunar Eclipse - Stefan Sperl Magical Realism and Nomadic Writing in the Maghreb - John Erickson Of Numerology and Butterflies: Magical Realism in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses - Stephanie Jones From The Thousand and One Nights to Magical Realism: Postnational Predicament in The Journey of Little Ghandi by Elias KhouryElias Khoury - Wen-Chin Ouyang Guide to Further Reading [with Kenneth Reeds] - Stephen M. Hart Select Bibliography - Stephen M. Hart

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Book SynopsisWritten against a background of the Thirty Years' War and firstpublished in 1669, this renowned picaresque classic recounts withwonderful biting satire the vagabond adventures of a not-so-simplesimpleton during one of Europe'sfiercest, yet ultimately most futilewars. Simplicius is an earthy character; he humiliates the mighty,confounds the gods, ridicules the pretentious. The translationuses the authoritative first edition for its text, andthough it hasbeen slightly abbreviated, no essential passages have been sacrificed.This unexpurgated translation reflects the linguistic turmoil andrichness of German in the 17th century; it is ideal as the centrepiecefor courses in German literature in translation and courses in theEuropean Baroque.

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Book SynopsisGegenstand dieses Buches ist das Schreiben in seinem geschichtlichen Verlauf. Es beschreibt die Geschichte des Schreibens als Geschichte einer Tätigkeit. Der erste Teil der Darstellung setzt da ein, wo die Geschichte des Schreibens in Europa ihren Anfang genommen hat: in der griechischen Antike um die Mitte des 8. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., als man zum ersten Mal konsequent alphabetisch schrieb. Sie endet mit den Auswirkungen und Folgen des Buchdrucks auf die Schreibpraxis in der Zeit zwischen dem Ende des 15. und dem Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts. Im Mittelpunkt der faszinierenden Darstellung steht genau das, was in anderen Dokumentationen ausgespart wird: nicht die äußeren Bedingungen, nicht die Texte, weder ihr Inhalt noch die Form, und auch nicht die Menschen, die geschrieben haben, sondern vornehmlich das, was sie getan haben, wenn sie schrieben, ihre Tätigkeit. Diese Tätigkeit umfasst verschiedene Konzeptionen und Begriffe des Schreibens, die spezifische Organisation der Schreibhandlung und die jeweilige historische Praxis des Schreibens. Dieses Buch entwirft in klarer Sprache und Struktur erstmals eine umfassende 'innere' Geschichte des Schreibens als prägende Kulturtechnik des Menschen. Dersich in Vorbereitung befindendezweite Band widmet sich der Geschichte des Schreibens von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. Pluspunkte: Darstellung der Geschichte des Schreibens von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart Gut lesbare Einführung in die Funktionen, Methoden und Bildungsvoraussetzungen des Schreibens in den verschiedenen Epochen Historische Darstellung der zentralen Kulturtechnik des Menschen

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Book SynopsisThis study investigates the attitude of Lucian of Samosata towards the Greek tragedy. It presents for the first time a comparison between the Lucianic oeuvre and the Greek tragedy according to three points of view: i) the tragic language, ii) the tragic themes (philosophy, religion, morals, mythology), and iii) the literary forms (an analysis of the parodic Podagra). It also deals with the later history of the Greek tragedy, starting from the 4th century B.C. up to the Imperial times. Using the Lucianic corpus as a witness and a document of its time concerning the tragedy, we aim to gain a better knowledge of Lucian as a writer, of the history of the tragic genre through the antiquity and of the feeling which one had in the imperial times about the Greek civilization and the Greek language.

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Book SynopsisThe first volume of the new series “European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies” focuses on the relation between the avant-garde, modernism and Europe. It combines interdisciplinary and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics. The essays, written by experts from more than fifteen countries, seek to bring out the complexity of the European avant-garde and modernism by relating it to Europe’s intricate history, multiculturalism and multilingualism. They aim to inquire into the divergent cultural views on Europe taking shape in avant-garde and modernist practices and to chart a composite image of the “other Europe(s)” that have emerged from the (contemporary) avant-garde and experimental modernism. How did the avant-garde and modernism in (and outside) Europe give shape to local, national and pan-European forms of identity and community? To what extent does the transnational exchange and cross-fertilisation of aesthetic tendencies illustrate the well-rehearsed claim that the avant-gardes form a typically European phenomenon? Dealing with canonised as well as lesser known exponents of modernism and the avant-garde throughout Europe, this book will appeal to all those interested in European cultural, literary and art history.

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Book SynopsisOne of the most contentious questions in contemporary literary studies is whether there can ever be a science of literature that can lay claim to objectivity and universality, for example by concentrating on philological criticism, by appealing to cognitive science, or by exposing the underlying media of literary communication. The present collection of essays seeks to open up this discussion by posing the question’s historical and systematic double: has there been a science of literature, i.e. a mode of presentation and practice of reference in science that owes its coherence to the discourse of literature? Detailed analyses of scientific, literary and philosophical texts show that from the late 18th to the late 19th century science and literature were bound to one another through an intricate web of mutual dependence and distinct yet incalculable difference. The Science of Literature suggests that this legacy continues to shape the relation between literary and scientific discourses inside and outside of academia.

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Book SynopsisSymbolic representation is a crucial subject for and a potent heuristic instrument of diaspora studies. This special focus inquires into the forms and functions of symbols of diaspora both in aesthetic practice and in critical discourse, analyzing and theorizing symbols from Shakespeare to Bollywood as well as in critical writings of theorists of diaspora. What kinds of symbols and symbolic practices, contributors ask, are germane to the representation, both emic and etic, of diasporics and diasporas? How are specific symbols and symbolic practices analyzed across the academic fields contributing to diaspora studies? Which symbols and symbolic practices inform the academic study of diasporas, sometimes unconsciously or without being remarked on? To study these phenomena is to engage in a dialogue that aims at refining the theoretical and methodological vocabulary and practice of truly transdisciplinary diaspora studies while attending to the imperative of specificity that inheres in this emerging field. The volume collects a range of analyses from social anthropology, history and ethnography to literary and film studies, all combining readings of individual symbolic practices with meta-theoretical reflections.

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Book SynopsisThe analyses of German and Brazilian cultures found in this book offer a much-needed rethinking of the intercultural paradigm for the humanities and literary and cultural studies. This collection examines cultural interactions between Germany and Brazil from the Early Modern period to the present day, especially how authors, artists and other intellectuals address the development of society, intervene in the construction and transformation of cultural identities, and observe the introduction of differing cultural elements in and beyond the limits of the nation. The contributors represent various academic disciplines, including German Studies, Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, Art History and the social sciences. Their essays cover a wide range of works and media, and the issues they address are relevant not only for each of the scholarly disciplines involved, but also in discussions of current cultural practices in connection to all forms of media. The collection thus serves as a model for further intercultural research, since it calls into question the very terms through which we understand the relationships between cultures, as well as their products, practices, and perspectives.

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Book SynopsisThis essay collection examines the theory and history of graphic narrative as one of the most interesting and versatile forms of storytelling in contemporary media culture. Its contributions test the applicability of narratological concepts to graphic narrative, examine aspects of graphic narrative beyond the ‘single work’, consider the development of particular narrative strategies within individual genres, and trace the forms and functions of graphic narrative across cultures. Analyzing a wide range of texts, genres, and narrative strategies from both theoretical and historical perspectives, the international group of scholars gathered here offers state-of-the-art research on graphic narrative in the context of an increasingly postclassical and transmedial narratology.This is the revised second edition of From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels, which was originally published in the Narratologia series.

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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 SynopsisThe Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures is the first globally comprehensive attempt to chart the rich field of world literatures in English. Part I navigates different usages of the term ‘world literature’ from an historical point of view. Part II discusses a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to world literature. This is also where the handbook’s conceptualisation of ‘Anglophone world literatures’ – in the plural – is developed and interrogated in juxtaposition with proximate fields of inquiry such as postcolonialism, translation studies, memory studies and environmental humanities. Part III charts sociological approaches to Anglophone world literatures, considering their commodification, distribution, translation and canonisation on the international book market. Part IV, finally, is dedicated to the geographies of Anglophone world literatures and provides sample interpretations of literary texts written in English.

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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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Book SynopsisWhile there are publications on Wittgenstein’s interest in Dostoevsky’s novels and the recurring mentions of Wittgenstein in Sebald’s works, there has been no systematic scholarship on the relation between perception (such as showing and pictures) and the problem of an adequate presentation of interiority (such as intentions or pain) for these three thinkers.This relation is important in Wittgenstein’s treatment of the subject and in his private language argument, but it is also an often overlooked motif in both Dostoevsky’s and Sebald’s works. Dostoevsky’s depiction of mindset discrepancies in a rapidly modernizing Russia can be analyzed interms of multi-aspectivity. The theatricality of his characters demonstrates especially well Wittgenstein’s account of interiority's interrelatedness with overt public practices and codes. In Sebald’s Austerlitz, Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances is an aesthetic strategy within the novel. Visual tropes are most obviously present in Sebald's use of photography, and can partially be read as an ethical-aesthetic imperative of rendering pain visible. Tea Lobo's book contributes towards a non-Cartesian account of literary presentations of inner life based on Wittgenstein's thought.

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Book Synopsis Landscape, as it appears and is described throughout the works of Bernardo Carvalho and Robert Walser, provides an excellent—yet virtually unexplored—pathway to the authors’ literary projects. The landscape functions here as a synthetic and unifying figure that triggers, at first, through the analysis of its description per se, the main and most evident elements of the authors’ works. However, when sustained as a methodological figure beyond the scope of its own description, the landscape soon reveals a darker, far more fascinating and far less explored side of the authors’ oeuvres: a vengeful, seemingly defeatist resentment against the status quo, which gives way to the more latent and biting elements of the authors’ prose, such as irony, the unheimlich, an anti-heroic agenda, the apocalyptic aesthetics of a disaster-prone fictional world, as well as an understanding of history and literature through the figures of failure and marginality. By drawing from diverse critical traditions from Latin-America and Europe, this comparative text seeks to unravel, in all of its complexity and scope, the fictional stage upon which Walser’s and Carvalho’s characters narrate, with their dying breath, a world that is slowly undoing itself.

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Book SynopsisThe multilingualism and polyphony of Jewish literary writing across the globe demands a collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary investigation into questions regarding methods of researching and teaching literatures. Disseminating Jewish Literatures compiles case studies that represent a broad range of epistemological and textual approaches to the curricula and research programs of literature departments in Europe, Israel, and the United States. In doing so, it promotes the integration of Jewish literatures into national philologies and the implementation of comparative, transnational approaches to the reading, teaching, and researching of literatures. Instead of a dichotomizing approach, Disseminating Jewish Literatures endorses an exhaustive, comprehensive conceptualization of the Jewish literary corpus across languages. Included in this volume are essays on literatures in Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish, as well as essays reflecting the fields of Yiddish philology and Latin American studies. The volume is based on the papers presented at the Gentner Symposium funded by the Minerva Foundation, held at the Freie Universität Berlin in June 2018.

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