Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisSince its inception in the early 1830s, southern frontier humor (also known as the humor of the Old Southwest) has had enduring appeal. The onset of the new millennium precipitated an impressive rejuvenation of scholarly interest. Southern Frontier Humor: New Approaches represents the next step in this revival, providing a series of essays with fresh perspectives and contexts.First, the book shows the importance of Henry Junius Nott, a virtually unknown and forgotten writer who mined many of the principal subjects, themes, tropes, and character types associated with southern frontier humor, followed by an essay addressing how this humor genre and its ideological impact helped to stimulate a national cultural revolution. Several essays focus on the genre's legacy to the post-Civil War era, exploring intersections between southern frontier humor and southern local color writers--Joel Chandler Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Sherwood Bonner. Mark Twain's African American dialect piece ""A True Story,"" though employing some of the conventions of southern frontier humor, is reexamined as a transitional text, showing his shift to broader concerns, particularly in race portraiture.Essays also examine the evolution of the trickster from the Jack Tales to Hooper's Simon Suggs to similar mountebanks in novels of John Kennedy Toole, Mark Childress, and Clyde Edgerton and transnational contexts, the latter exploring parallels between southern frontier humor and the Jamaican Anansi tales. Finally, the genre is situated contextually, using contemporary critical discourses, which are applied to G. W. Harris's Sut Lovingood and to various frontier hunting stories.

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Book SynopsisDespite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

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Book SynopsisHerman Melville’s Moby-Dick is often considered the greatest American novel – a vast epic that combines deep philosophy and high adventure as well as rich comedy and profound tragedy. Moby-Dick also offers a particularly diverse array of characters of various types, personalities, and ethnic backgrounds, and its styles are as varied as the people it depicts. Full of humorous dialects and idioms and brimming with probing, impassioned, poetic speeches, Melville’s novel explores the fascinating world of whale-hunting in the mid-nineteenth century, even as it also explores some of the most perennial questions about the purposes and meanings of life. The final impact of the book, when enraged whale meets pursuing ship, is one of the most memorable episodes in all of American literature.This volume and author of nearly 30 books and over 300 essays) is designed to help make Melville’s great novel more readily accessible to a wide audience, especially students and everyday readers. Containing numerous essays by many prominent Melville scholars, the book places Melville and his epic novel in their various historical contexts while also showing how the novel continues to be relevant – and powerful – today. The volume seeks to show that Moby-Dick is no mere period piece but instead fully deserves its reputation as perhaps the greatest work of American fiction.

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Book SynopsisDiverse in theme, style and cultural context, the American short story can take many forms. The only common theme is the short story’s unique ability to captivate an audience. This volume discusses the origin and popularity of the short story. Original critical essays on a diverse collection of writers highlight Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, Kate Chopin and many others.Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources.

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Book SynopsisRussian Novelists is a single-volume reference that contains selected essays from Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Every article in this set was carefully selected by our editors to provide the best information available about the topic covered.The essays in Russian Novelists discuss such influential writers as Vassily Aksyonov, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Pushkin, and Leo Tolstoy.

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Book SynopsisToni Morrison's 1987 tale of Sethe, an escaped slave living in Cincinnati and struggling to overcome her past, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 along with instant international acclaim. Several essays in this volume study major themes of Beloved, including motherhood, the psychological impacts of slavery, and repression of memory, as well as connections to the real-life slave who inspired Morrison's story.Taken together, the essays presented in this volume give special attention to the traumatic horrors of slavery. Indeed, although their authors examine Sethe's act of infanticide from various perspectives, it is evident that the recurring theme throughout the volume is not the question of rightness or the wrongness of the act itself, but the ways in which the characters contend with and survive a dehumanizing and absurd historical movement. Beloved, the narrative, and Beloved the character, become Morrison's conduits for confronting a story that is impossible to tell but needs to be told.Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: About This Volume Critical Context: Original Introductory Essays Critical Readings: Original In-Depth Essays Further Readings Detailed Bibliography Detailed Bio of the Editor General Subject Index

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Book SynopsisWhen the New York Times published the first print interview with Cormac McCarthy in 1992, the author was barely known outside a small group of academics, writers, and devoted readers. None of his books up to that point, among them Suttree and Blood Meridian, had sold more than five thousand copies in hardcover. But that same year McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses made the best-seller lists, and over the next two decades, with the publication of such books as No Country for Old Men, the basis for the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning film, and The Road, a Pulitzer Prize winner and an Oprah’s Book Club selection, McCarthy became a household name. In Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Evolution, Daniel Robert King traces McCarthy’s journey from cult figure to literary icon. Drawing extensively on McCarthy’s papers and those of Albert Erskine, his editor and devoted advocate at Random House, as well as the latest in McCarthy scholarship, King investigates the changes that McCarthy’s work as a novelist, his writing methods, and the reception of his novels, both inside and outside the publishing industry, have undergone over the course of his career. Taking several of McCarthy’s major novels as case studies, King explores the lengthy process of their composition through multiple drafts and revisions, the signal contributions of the author’s agents and publishers, and McCarthy’s growing confidence as a writer who is strongly attentive to tone and repeated metaphors and images. This work also reveals the wide range of McCarthy’s reading and research, especially of historical and scientific materials, as well as key intertextual connections between the novels. Part literary biography, part archival investigation, and part study of print culture, this book is particularly revealing of how one talented writer, properly nurtured by dedicated allies, went on to gain a huge measure of recognition and respect, which has become increasingly difficult for serious authors to achieve in today’s profit-driven publishing world.

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Book SynopsisSince the release of his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, in 1965, Cormac McCarthy’s characters, intricate plots, and sometimes forbidding settings have captivated the attention of countless readers while exploring deep philosophical problems, including that of human agency and free will. This multiauthor volume places the full range of his novels in historical, literary, and cultural contexts and shifts the focus of critical engagement to questions of determinism, fatalism, and free will. Essayists over the course of eleven chapters show how McCarthy’s protagonists and antagonists often confront grotesque realities and destinies, and find themselves prey to incessant subconscious and uncontrollable forces. In the process, these scholars reveal that McCarthy’s works arrive thoroughly tinctured with religious complexities, ambiguities of ancient and modern thinking, and profoundly splintered notions of morality, freedom, and ethics. Consequently, McCarthy’s philosophical depth, mastery of language, and sometimes shocking psychological analysis are brought into sharp focus for longtime readers. With new scholarship from eminent critics, an accessible style, and precise attention to the lesser-known works, Cormac McCarthy’s Violent Destinies re-introduces the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist’s work under the twin themes of fatalism and determinism.Trade Review“Cormac McCarthy’s Violent Destinies is an intelligently assembled, thoughtful, and original collection of essays that, together, form a useful point of reference in the literature that is greater than the sum of its parts. Indeed, as a good collection should, this one provides both nuance and variety, and the editors focus the spotlight tightly on their themes illuminating McCarthy’s richly productive fiction.”—Nicholas Monk, director of Warwick University’s Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning and author of True and Living Prophet of Destruction: Cormac McCarthy and Modernity

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Book SynopsisAlthough Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird has attracted a great deal of scholarly and popular attention due to its engaging narrative and broad appeal to a sense of justice, little has been done to examine the modern classic through the lens of Lee's controversial novel Go Set a Watchman, published unexpectedly a year before the author's death. In Mockingbird Grows Up Cheli Reutter and Jonathan S. Cullick assemble a team of scholars to take on the task of interpreting, contextualising, and deconstructing To Kill a Mockingbird in the wake of Go Set a Watchman. The essays contained in this groundbreaking volume cover a range of literary topics, such as race, sexuality, language, and reading contexts. Critically, the volume revisits the question of African-American characterisation in Lee's work and reexamines the development of Atticus Finch, a character long believed to be an exemplar of justice and virtue in Lee's fiction. The editors also take on questions regarding the publication of Go Set a Watchman, and Holly Blackford contributes an essay that places Watchman within the pantheon of American literature.Literary scholars, educators, and those interested in southern literature will appreciate the new light this publication sheds on a classic American novel. Mockingbird Grows Up offers a deeper understanding of a canonical American work and prepares a new generation to engage with Harper Lee's appealing prose, complex characters, and influential metaphors.

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Book SynopsisIn the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. On their journey across the American West, he and his companions would take in breathtaking vistas in the Rockies and along the Pacific Coast, speak with a young John Muir in the Yosemite Valley, stop off in Salt Lake City for a meeting with Brigham Young, and encounter a diversity of communities and cultures that would challenge their Yankee prejudices.Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this group's travels onto the private story of Emerson's final years, as aphasia set in and increasingly robbed him of his words. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.

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Book SynopsisIn the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. On their journey across the American West, he and his companions would take in breathtaking vistas in the Rockies and along the Pacific Coast, speak with a young John Muir in the Yosemite Valley, stop off in Salt Lake City for a meeting with Brigham Young, and encounter a diversity of communities and cultures that would challenge their Yankee prejudices.Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this group's travels onto the private story of Emerson's final years, as aphasia set in and increasingly robbed him of his words. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.

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Book SynopsisIn the 1960s, Charles Wright’s (1932–2008) star was on the rise. After dropping out of high school and serving in the Korean War, the young Black writer landed in New York, where he was mentored by Norman Mailer, signed a book deal with a leading publisher, and was celebrated by the likes of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. Over the decades to follow, Wright would lead a peripatetic and at times precarious life, moving between Tangier, Veracruz, Paris, and New York, penning a regular column for the Village Voice, living off the goodwill of his friends, and battling addiction and, later, mental health issues. As W. Lawrence Hogue shows, Wright’s innovative fiction stands apart, offering a different vision of outcast Black Americans in the postwar era and using satire to bring agency and humanity to working-class characters. This critical biography—the first devoted to Wright’s significant but largely forgotten story—brings new attention to the writer’s impressive body of work, in the context of a wild, but troubled, life.Trade Review “This fascinating biography of Charles Wright covers Morocco, Mexico, Europe, and points in the United States where he encounters sections of society rarely attended to. Hogue does an excellent job of making us understand Wright’s importance, his failures, his struggles, and the major contribution of his work to American and African American literary culture.”—Mary Helen Washington, author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s “Though Charles Wright left little in the way of papers behind, Hogue’s dogged pursuit of leads has given us the most complete documentary record of this important Black writer—someone whose queer, surreal, and satirical fiction no doubt anticipates the main currents of Black studies in the second decade of the twenty-first century.”—Kinohi Nishikawa, author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary UndergroundTable of Contents Preface Chapter One: The Missouri Years Chapter Two: Arriving in New York City Chapter Three: The Messenger Chapter Four: The Years in Tangier Chapter Five: The Return to New York and the publication of The Wig Chapter Six: The Seventies and the Village Voice Chapter Seven: After Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About and the Hodenfields Chapter Eight: The Eighties Chapter Nine: The Nineties Chapter Ten: The Two Thousands Works Cited Notes

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Book SynopsisIn the 1960s, Charles Wright’s (1932–2008) star was on the rise. After dropping out of high school and serving in the Korean War, the young Black writer landed in New York, where he was mentored by Norman Mailer, signed a book deal with a leading publisher, and was celebrated by the likes of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. Over the decades to follow, Wright would lead a peripatetic and at times precarious life, moving between Tangier, Veracruz, Paris, and New York, penning a regular column for the Village Voice, living off the goodwill of his friends, and battling addiction and, later, mental health issues. As W. Lawrence Hogue shows, Wright’s innovative fiction stands apart, offering a different vision of outcast Black Americans in the postwar era and using satire to bring agency and humanity to working-class characters. This critical biography—the first devoted to Wright’s significant but largely forgotten story—brings new attention to the writer’s impressive body of work, in the context of a wild, but troubled, life.Trade Review “This fascinating biography of Charles Wright covers Morocco, Mexico, Europe, and points in the United States where he encounters sections of society rarely attended to. Hogue does an excellent job of making us understand Wright’s importance, his failures, his struggles, and the major contribution of his work to American and African American literary culture.”—Mary Helen Washington, author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s “Though Charles Wright left little in the way of papers behind, Hogue’s dogged pursuit of leads has given us the most complete documentary record of this important Black writer—someone whose queer, surreal, and satirical fiction no doubt anticipates the main currents of Black studies in the second decade of the twenty-first century.”—Kinohi Nishikawa, author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground

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Book SynopsisMany tell the spirited tales of the American West, describing life in the North American frontier as it moved from its earliest border at the Appalachian Mountain range through Westward expansion to the Pacific coastline. Others write or speak of their rich, varied experiences as members of First People Nations. Each story takes its place in history, part of the development and narrative of America.This volume provides both an overview of and a more in-depth context to the stories of over 100 acclaimed writers. Each entry includes a comprehensive overview of each author's biography and literary career as well as a ready-reference listing of their major works in all genres.Writers in this volume include: Cormac McCarthy Black Elk Black Hawk Sherman Alexie Leslie Marmon Silko Janet Campbell Hale Paul Gunn Allen Vine Deloria James Fennimore Cooper Larry McMurtry Willa Cather Kit Carson Mark Twain Stephen Crane Louis L’Amour N. Scott Momaday Louise Erdrich James Welch Joy Harjo Charles Eastman John Joseph Mathews Linda Hogan Tommy Picoand Tommy Orange. Each essay identifies the writer’s major genres, and birth and death dates and places. The volume also includes a Chronological List of Authors; Genre Index; Personages Index; Title Index; Subject Index; and dozens of photographs. Designed to introduce readers at the high school and university level to the rich world of Native Americans and the vivid literature of the American West, this title provides students with careful research and resources to further explore these rich literary traditions.

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Book SynopsisAlice Walker's The Color Purple is one of the most celebrated and influential novels in American and African American literature, a rare winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for Fiction, and the inspiration for an acclaimed film adaptation and Broadway musical. In celebration of The Color Purple's fortieth anniversary, this volume offers new readings of the classic literary work from biographical, cultural, historical, and spiritual points of view, with additional analyses devoted to art, adaptations, comparative texts, ethics, linguistics, masculinity, motherhood, poetry, and social activism and movements such as Black Lives Matter.

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Book SynopsisErnest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, a late work in this important writer's long career, has often been examined not only in relation to his previous works but also as a new departure. An unusually brief novel, this book has been discussed not only in relation to the novella genre but also in connection to Hemingway's own life, with the author himself often being compared to the ""old man"" of the title. This volume offers a wide range of approaches to the text, exploring it in terms of history, psychology, sociology, and—last but not least—artistic achievement.

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Book SynopsisThe first study to bring Hemingway, Vonnegut, O'Brien, and 9/11 literature together in order to examine views about war, gender, and domesticity over a hundred-year period. War has often been seen as the domain of men and thus irrelevant to gender analysis, and American writers have frequently examined war according to traditional gender expectations: that boys become men by going to war and girls become women by building a home. Yet the writers discussed in this book complicate these expectations, since their female characters often take part directly in war and especially since their male characters repeatedly imagine domestic spaces for themselves in the midst of war. Chapters on Hemingway and the First World War, Kurt Vonnegut and the Second World War, and Tim O'Brien and the Vietnam War place these writers in their particular historical and cultural contexts while tracing similarities in their depiction of gender relationships, imagined domestic spaces, and the representability of trauma. The book concludes by examining post-9/11 American literature, probing what happenswhen the front lines actually come home to Americans. While much has been written about Hemingway, Vonnegut, O'Brien, and even 9/11 literature separately, this study is the first to bring them together in order to examine views about war, gender, and domesticity over a hundred-year period. It argues that 9/11 literature follows a long tradition of American writing about war in which the domestic and public realms are inextricably intertwined and in which imagined domestic spaces can provide a window into representing wartime trauma, an experience often thought to be unrepresentable or incomprehensible to those who were not actually there. Susan Farrell is Professor of English at the College of Charleston.Table of ContentsIntroduction "Isn't It Pretty to Think So?": Ernest Hemingway's Impossible Homes "A Universe of Two": Constructing Worlds through Narrative in the Work of Kurt Vonnegut "It Wasn't a War Story. It Was a Love Story": Tim O'Brien and the Ethics of Home "A Hole in the Middle of Me": Shattered Homes in Post-9/11 Literature Afterword Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisThe first English-language monograph on Hermann Broch's literary and theoretical work on mass hysteria. Winner of the 2023 Radomír Luža Prize for the Best Manuscript in Austrian/Czechoslovak Studies in the World War II Era Austrian Jewish author Hermann Broch (1886-1951), a leading figure of European Modernism, spent decades attempting to understand the phenomenon of mass hysteria. With his work, he hoped to help protect society from the allure of mass hysteria, embodied in the fanatical appeal of National Socialism. He was torn between two approaches to the problem: using literature to diagnose and expose the irrational knowledge that underpins mass hysteria, and employing theory as a more precise and effective means of doing the same. In this first English-language monograph on the topic, Brett E. Sterling traces the development of Broch's understanding of the mass from an initial confrontation in 1918 to a recurring theme in his fiction and ultimately to the monumental but incomplete Massenwahntheorie (Theory of Mass Hysteria, 1939-48). In thorough readings of Broch's major fictional and theoretical works, the analysis centers on the question of how his literature and theory provide distinct but complementary approaches to conceiving and representing the elusive figure of the mass and the attendant experience of mass hysteria. With political extremism and conspiratorial thinking on the rise, Sterling makes the case that Broch's insights into mass hysteria - literary as well as theoretical - are of renewed relevance to a contemporary audience.Trade ReviewThis is one of the best and clearest investigations of Hermann Broch's work that has appeared in recent years. . . . It is the first monograph devoted to the representation and analysis of the modern mass in Broch's narrative and essayistic works. * Journal of Austrian Studies *Notoriously, Hermann Broch never makes it easy for his readers, be it in the tortuous style or the challenging subjects of his writing. Yet as Sterling shows throughout this lucid and thought-inducing study, everything that so exercised Broch during the 'age of extremes' has, alas, become current again today. * Modern Language Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1: First Encounters, 1918-1929 2: The Power of Literature 3: The Mass Takes Shape: Literary Representations 4: Theory and Its Discontents: The Massenwahntheorie 5: The Threshold of Experience: Die Verzauberung Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExplores the process of "becoming woman" through an analysis of the depiction of girls and young women in contemporary Anglo-American and German literary texts. What does it mean to "become woman" in the context of neoliberalism and postfeminism? What is the role of will in this process? Willful Girls explores these questions through an analysis of the depiction of girls and youngwomen in contemporary Anglo-American and German literary texts. It identifies four sets of concerns that are vital for an understanding of gendered subject formation in the contemporary context: agency and volition; body and beauty; sisterhood and identification; and sex and desire. The book examines numerous nonfiction feminist texts as well as novels by Helene Hegemann, Caitlin Moran, Charlotte Roche, Emma Jane Unsworth, Kate Zambreno, and Juli Zeh, among others. These texts illustrate the complex processes by which female subjects become women today. Failure, refusal, disgust, and anger are striking features of these becomings. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed (Willful Subjects) and thinkers including Simone de Beauvoir, Rosi Braidotti, and Elizabeth Grosz, the book demonstrates the significance of willfulness for understandings and assertions of female agency. In addition, it proposesa view of literary works themselves as instances of willfulness. The book will be of interest to scholars working in comparative literature, English, German studies, and feminist, gender, and queer studies. Emily Jeremiah is Senior Lecturer in German and Gender Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.Trade ReviewAn intricate and important work of literary criticism which will be of interest to scholars, students, and those curious about contemporary feminisms across national and linguistic boundaries. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[T]his book [is] a useful corrective to the excessive focus on 'adult models of subjectivity' (2) that still dominate mainstream feminist literature. Jeremiah is, instead, attentive to literary depictions of childhood . . . . Jeremiah's methodology is both comparative and connective . . . . [Her] narration is lucid, cogent, and conversational, beginning with a synoptic reading of the various novels, and culminating in a sustained critical engagement with their various thematic issues. . . . It is perhaps a measure of how good Jeremiah's critical work is that I found [this book] to be an excellent template for examining similar concerns in other genres, such as Modernist poetry and ?lm. -- Shalini Sengupta * CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S WRITING *[O]ffers a critical exploration of the formation of gendered subjects by analyzing depictions of young women in a selection of . . . texts, both fiction and nonfiction. . . . [W]ill prove useful both in the German and Anglo-American context. * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Willful Girls Contemporary Anglo-American and German Feminisms Agency and Volition Body and Beauty Sisterhood and Identification Sex and Desire Conclusion: Green Girls, Trainwrecks, and Willful Politics Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAssesses the relevance of the works of Fontane, perhaps the foremost German novelist between Goethe and Mann, for the twenty-first century. Theodor Fontane remains a canonical figure in German literature, the most important representative of poetic realism, and likely the best German-language novelist between Goethe and Mann, yet scholarly attention to his works oftenlags behind his stature, at least in the English-speaking academy. This volume, coinciding with Fontane's 200th birthday in 2019, assesses the relevance of his works for us today and also draws attention to the most current English-language research. Much has changed in the last two decades in critical theory, and the volume highlights how new methodological approaches and new archival research can update our understanding of Fontane's works. Although his novels are famously rooted in the details of quotidian life in nineteenth-century Germany, they also reflect larger historical transformations that resonate with our world today (e.g., financial crisis, class conflict, changing gender roles, and migration) and so speak to contemporary critical interests. The volume's contributors draw on literary and cultural studies approaches including gender and sexuality studies, emotion studies, transnationalismand globalization, media and visual studies, rhetorical criticism, paratextual criticism, and digital humanities. Their contributions survey a wide range of Fontane's literary production in order to speak to both German and non-German audiences in the twenty-first century. Contributors: James N. Bade, Russell A. Berman, Katharina Adeline Engler-Coldren, Todd Kontje, John B. Lyon, Ervin Malakaj, Nicolas von Passavant, Lynne Tatlock, Christian Thomas, Brian Tucker, Michael J. White, Holly A. Yanacek. John B. Lyon is Professor of German at the University of Pittsburgh. Brian Tucker is Associate Professor of German at Wabash College.Trade Review[A] welcome addition to Fontane scholarship in general, and to English-language scholarship on Fontane in particular. . . . [T]imely and imperative. . . . The collection's new theoretical approaches, as well as its profound close readings, advance Fontane scholarship into the twenty-first century and will serve as a profitable springboard for continuing endeavors. . . . Filling a critical gap in scholarship, [this volume] documents [Fontane's] resilience and enduring relevance for readers and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. -- Edith H. Krause * GERMAN QUARTERLY *[C]ommemorate[s] what would have been Theodor Fontane's 200th birthday . . . [and aims] to both enrich and enliven English-language research on . . . [his] work. . . . Insights into Fontane's personal life, his agency as an author and as an aging observer, and his views on the military reveal an engaged, prescient, and versatile mind. The essays build on established research findings and offer some new readings. All German citations are translated. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Editions Introduction: Fontane in the Twenty-First Century - John B. Lyon and Brian Tucker Narrative Digression and the Transformation of Nationhood in Vor dem Sturm - Russell A. Berman Nasty Women: Female Anger as Moral Judgment in Grete Minde and Effi Briest - Holly A. Yanacek Peforming the Philistine: Gossip as a Narrative Device and a Strategy for Reflection on Anti-Semitism in Theodor Fontane's L'Adultera - Nicolas von Passavant To Have an Eye: Visual Culture and the Misapprehension of Class in Irrungen, Wirrungen - Brian Tucker Fontane as a Pacifist? The Anti-War Message in Quitt and Fontane's Changing Attitude to Militarism - James N. Bade Disjunctive Transnationalisms in Fontane's Frau Jenny Treibel - John B. Lyon On the "Right Measure" in Effi Briest: Ethics and Aesthetics of the Prosaic - Katharina Adeline Engler-Coldren Transfiguration, Effect, and Engagement: Theodor Fontane's Aesthetic Thought - Michael J. White Fontane and World Literature: Prussians, Jews, and the Specter of Africa in Die Poggenpuhls - Todd Kontje Von Zwanzig bis Dreissig: The Male Author in Parts - Lynne Tatlock Melusine von Barby's Barriers and Connections in Fontane's Der Stechlin - Christian Thomas Senescence and Fontane's Der Stechlin - Ervin Malakaj Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisHighlights the spirituality and cosmopolitanism of four contemporary German Muslim writers, showing that they undermine the "clash-of-civilizations" narrative and open up space for new ways of coexisting. At a time when the place of Muslims in German society is being disputed, this book explores how four contemporary German writers of Muslim backgrounds - Zafer Senocak, SAID, Feridun Zaimoglu, and Navid Kermani - point beyond identity politics and suggest new ways of thinking about religion and community. Twist highlights both the spirituality and the cosmopolitanism of these authors, bringing their thought into dialogue with the work of Jean-Luc Nancy. Nancy is critical of communities based on a single guiding principle (be it God or Reason) and thus involving a universalizing core that leads to conflicts between identity groups. He proposes alternative notions of both religious faith (a postmonotheistic version with elements of mysticism) and community (spontaneous communities requiring no shared identity). Twist relates these arguments to post-9/11 debates over cosmopolitanism and religion, illuminating how the writers under study draw upon mystical Islam's deconstructive potential, finding divine insight in love, sex, music, pain, and beauty. Such a worldly and affective spirituality dispels associations between Islam and sexual conservatism while rejecting monotheistic ideology. Thus, unlike the homogenizing drive of universalist cosmopolitanism, these writers' nonfoundational conceptualizations undermine the twenty-first century's "clash-of-civilizations" narrative and open up space for new ways of coexisting. JOSEPH TWIST is Fixed-term Lecturer in German at University College Dublin.Trade Review[A] welcome contribution to the scholarship on the works of German authors of Muslim background. By studying the philosophical insights in the literary works of Senocak, Zaimoglu, Kermani, and SAID, Twist highlights literature's openness to alterity and its 'capacity for experimentation.' His work shows that the deconstructive potential of minority literature contests the ways in which we think of cosmopolitanism and identity. -- Mert Bahadir Reisoglu * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *[P]rovides a welcome analysis of Muslim spiritualities . . . . Twist's valuable contribution . . . allows a creative perspective on engaging Islam seriously in readings of contemporary German literature. * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *[A] powerful counter-model of both conventional ideas about (post)religious identities and academia's traditional way of reading (and thereby constructing) Muslim authors as representatives and cultural mediators of their faith . . . . [O]ne of the latest and most valuable contributions to reimagining Islam toward an immanentist spirituality, a worldly, cosmopolitan faith that appreciates and acknowledges differences and interconnectedness . . . . * STUDIES IN 20TH- and 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Spirituality, Cosmopolitanism, and Muslim German Writers Between Heaven and Earth, and Self and Other: Zafer Senocak's Übergang Poetry, Prayer, and Apostasy: SAID's Psalmen Romantic Religion and Counter-Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism: Feridun Zaimoglu's Liebesbrand Between Pleasure and Terror: The Divine in Navid Kermani's Fiction Conclusion: Intellectual, Spiritual, and Cultural Renewal Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe first book to offer a cutting-edge discussion of contemporary travel writing in German, Anxious Journeys looks both at classical tropes of travel writing and its connection to current debates. The rich contemporary literature of travel has been the focus of numerous recent publications in English that seek to understand how travel narratives, with their distinctive representations of identities, places, and cultures, respond to today's globalized, high-speed world characterized by the dual mass movements of tourism and migration. Yet a corresponding cutting-edge discussion of twenty-first-century travel writing in German has until now been missing. The fourteen essays in Anxious Journeys redress this situation. They analyze texts by leading authors such as Felicitas Hoppe, Christoph Ransmayr, Julie Zeh, Navid Kermani, Judith Schalansky, Ilija Trojanow, and others, as well as topics such as Turkish-German travelogues and the relationship of comics to travel writing. The volume examines how writers engage with classic tropes of travel writing and how they react to the current sense of crisis and belatedness. It also links travel to ongoing debates about the role of the nation, mass migration, and the European project, as well as to Germany's place in the larger world order. Contributors: Karin Baumgartner, Heather Merle Benbow, Anke S. Biendarra, John Blair and Muriel Cormican, Nicole Coleman, Carola Daffner, Christina Gerhardt, Nicole Grewling, Gundela Hachmann, Andrew Wright Hurley, Christina Kraenzle, Magda Tarnawaska Senel, Monika Shafi, Sunka Simon. Karin Baumgartner is Professor of German at the University of Utah. Monika Shafi is Elias Ahuja Professor of German at the University of Delaware.Trade ReviewThe editors . . . opt[] for a heterogeneous definition [of travel literature] that includes first-person documentaries, fiction and fictionalized travel impressions, visual records such as comics and films, poetic forms, chick lit, and journalistic essays [and] covers gender differences, treats inequality between privileged and desperate travel, illustrates the injustice between poverty and wealth, and connects sex travel and exploitation. . . . [A]cute analyses . . . . A valuable resource for those interested in contemporary German culture. Recommended. * CHOICE *With the consideration of other forms of media like comics and film, this volume exceeds the boundaries of literature per se and thereby dares to move forward exploratively into truly unknown climes. -- Michaela Holdenried * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Since the beginning of the 21st century, German fictional and nonfictional travel literature alike have taken a more anxious look at travel, as Karin Baumgartner and Monika Shafi demonstrate in their multifaceted and cleverly introduced anthology. What they title summatively as Anxious Journeys encompasses various experiences of a loss of lightheartedness. . . . The volume brings . . . hitherto understudied aspects of travel into the focus of research and illuminates travel literature as "the most socially important of all literary genres." -- Björn Weyand * GERMANISTIK *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Monika Shafi and Karin Baumgartner PART I. MIGRATION AND REFUGEES Travel and Trauma in Post-1989 Europe: Julya Rabinowich's Die Erdfresserin and Terézia Mora's Das Ungeheuer - Anke S. Biendarra Europe, the Middle East, and Identities in Transition: Navid Kermani's Einbruch der Wirklichkeit. Auf dem Flüchtlingstreck durch Europa - Magda Tarnawska Senel PART II. TRAVELERS AND TOURISTS Around the World in Seventy Stories: Christoph Ransmayr's Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes - Monika Shafi The Political Tourist in Juli Zeh's Die Stille ist ein Geräusch - Nicole Coleman Transnational Turkish-German Travelogues: Turkish-German Women Writers' Millennial Travel Narratives - Heather Merle Benbow The End of Travel in Sibylle Berg's Wunderbare Jahre and Rolf Niederhauser's Seltsame Schleife - Karin Baumgartner PART III. EXPLORATION AND NOSTALGIA Disappearing Act: Felicitas Hoppe's Hoppe and Australian Myths - Andrew Wright Hurley "Always conceal . . . tthy tenets, thy treasure, and thy travelling." Irony and Ambiguity in Ilija Trojanow's Travel Narratives About the Middle East - Gundela Hachmann PART IV. TRAVELING THROUGH MENTAL LANDSCAPES Walking in Circles: Josef Winkler's Mutter und der Bleistift (2013) - Carola Daffner Into Thin Air: Extreme Landscapes, Self-Discovery, and Narrative in Christoph Ransmayr's Der fliegende Berg - Nicole Grewling The Atlas as Travel Writing and as Post-Colonial Critique: Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands - Christina Gerhardt PART V. VISUAL AND SONIC JOURNEYS Graphic Journeys: Travel Writing and the Medium of Comics - Christina Kraenzle Travel's Utopian Potential in Andrea Grill's Liebesmaschine N.Y.C. - John Blair and Muriel Cormican Heimat: Diaspora-Ulrich Seidl's Paradies: Liebe - Sunka Simon Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThis book begins to recover the global history of solidarity as a principle of authorship, taking Anna Seghers (1900-1983) as an exemplar and reading her alongside prominent contemporaries: Brecht, Carpentier, and Spivak. In the twentieth century, leftist authors around the world understood their writing as an act of solidarity, but their common project was obscured by the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of socialist states. This book begins to recover the global history of solidarity as a principle of authorship, taking Anna Seghers (1900-1983), one of the most important German writers of her time, as an exemplar. Like other leftist authors in other languages and contexts, Seghers emphasized how people are implicated in global economic inequality and efforts to change it. Writing to Change the World introduces Seghers's concept of solidarian authorship by telling the story of an award, still in existence today, that she bequeathed to support East German and Latin American authors. The book then follows the history of the idea by reading Seghers alongside prominent contemporaries: the German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s, the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in the 1960s, and the Indian scholar and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in the 1980s. These writers thematized and critiqued solidarity, often by depicting characters who forge connections across borders. In doing so, they also commented on the literary institutions that fostered their own work. Providing new evidence for Seghers's global relevance beyond German literature, Writingto Change the World argues for the continued significance of solidarity both as a model of global authorship and as a framework for analysis of world literature. In doing so, it refocuses attention on global structures of inequality and collective imaginings of a better world. Marike Janzen is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Courtesy Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas.Trade ReviewIn the story of Anna Seghers we recognize not only an example of a dynamic life in thrilling times, but that of a thrilling life in dynamic times. Janzen's study is an outstanding contribution to literary history, world history, economic policy, and gender research. -- Dean J. Guarnaschelli * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *These comparative chapters offer astute insights, bolstered by helpful endnotes and bibliography. Broadening the view of both Seghers and the authors with whom she is compared, this book suggests further avenues for research and will appeal to a wide audience. Recommended. * CHOICE *Janzen takes Seghers's statement "for we write not to describe, but in describing to effect change" as her starting point in illuminating the project of left-wing authors, male and female, "to build solidarity and thus transform the world," something that "continues to hold relevance [in the post-communist world] and needs to be recovered." . . . Janzen first historicizes the Seghers Prize and then examines Seghers's works innovatively in a contrapuntal way to those of Brecht, Carpentier, and Spivak. -- Loreto Vilar * GERMANISTIK *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Authorship and World as Shared Time Solidarian Authorship after Socialism: From the Anna Seghers Stipendium to the Anna Seghers Preis Shared Time in the Comintern Era: Seghers and Brecht State Writers and Solidarity: Seghers and Carpentier Mute Messengers: Solidarity and the Subaltern in Seghers and Spivak Conclusion: Authorship as History and Norm Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTakes the recent wave of German autobiographical writing on illness and disability seriously as literature, demonstrating the value of a literary disability studies approach. In the German-speaking world there has been a new wave - intensifying since 2007 - of autobiographically inspired writing on illness and disability, death and dying. Nina Schmidt's book takes this writing seriously as literature,examining how the authors of such personal narratives come to write of their experiences between the poles of cliché and exceptionality. Identifying shortcomings in the approaches taken thus far to such texts, she makes suggestions as to how to better read their narratives from the stance of literary scholarship, then demonstrates the value of a literary disability studies approach to such writing with close readings of Charlotte Roche's Schoßgebete(2011), Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009), Verena Stefan's Fremdschläfer (2007), and - in the final, comparative chapter - Christoph Schlingensief's So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung (2009) and Wolfgang Herrndorf's blog-cum-book Arbeit und Struktur (2010-13). Schmidt shows that authors dealing with illness and disability do so with an awareness of their precarious subject position in the public eye, a position they negotiate creatively. Writing the liminal experience of serious illness along the borders of genre, moving between fictional and autobiographical modes, they carve out spaces from which they speak up and share their personal stories in the realm of literature, to political ends. Nina Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher in the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.Trade ReviewThe author shows how the texts under discussion break down borders in the literary and societal realms by way of their deep and multifaceted analyses...The way she proceeds does justice to texts that met a negative reception, offers a basis for the interpretation of future texts, and could represent an enrichment of German Studies. -- Malcolm Pender * GERMANISTIK *[B]reaks new ground . . . . Schmidt . . . ask[s] why so little scholarly attention has been paid to autobiographical writing about the universal experience of illness. [Her] impeccable scholarship explains why we haven't analyzed illness narratives more deeply, convinces us why we should, and shows us how we can. -- Elizabeth Hamilton * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Schmidt's exceptionally rich book makes a strong case for the need not only to include but better integrate the field of disability studies [and German Studies] . . . . [C]ontributes meaningfully to how we read and understand innovative narrative strategies, structures, and experiences of illness and disability . . . . [I]ts critical perspective would also be of great value to those interested in the fields of literature, narratology, and narrative medicine. * STUDIES IN 20TH- and 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE *Nina Schmidt's study of illness writing in contemporary German-language literature not only fills notable gaps in scholarship on the primary texts she analyzes, but also knits together a wide range of scholarship on autofiction, disability studies, and (not only German) illness writing into an engaging study of great importance. -- Alexandra M. Hill * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Taken as a whole, The Wounded Self is an excellent scholarly book that should significantly influence future debates on the topics of autobiography, autofiction, disability studies, and illness writing. In addition to German studies and cultural studies, it will be of great interest to the medical humanities. -- Ina Linge * WEIMARER BEITRÄGE *[C]omprehensive and excellently argued . . . . With its demanding objectives and carefully developed theoretical framework, The Wounded Self presents innovative and insightful readings of diverse twenty-first century illness narratives. This exemplary study is a valuable contribution to the field of illness narratives and to the ongoing complex theorization of autobiographical authorship that deals with illness. -- Franziska Gygax * BIOGRAPHY *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Contemporary German-Language Illness Writing as Literature; Analyzing Narrative Strategies, Aesthetic Forms, and Experimentations with Genre through the Lens of Disability Theory Autofiction, Disgust, and Trauma: Negotiating Vulnerable Subject Positions in Charlotte Roche's Schoßgebete (2011) Looking Beyond the Self - Reflecting the Other: Staring as a Narrative Device in Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009) Intertextuality and the Transnational in Verena Stefan's Fremdschläfer (2007): Writing Breast Cancer from beyond the Border Confronting Cancer Publicly: Diary Writing in Extremis by Christoph Schlingensief and Wolfgang Herrndorf Conclusion: "Und was dann"; Recent Developments and Research Desiderata Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisNew essays engaging with the developing field of literary geography to devote attention to the "regional" settings of Munro's stories and how they affect her characters' development or stasis. Alice Munro, the 2013 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, has revolutionized the architecture of the short story. This collection of essays on Munro engages with literary geography, an emergent interdisciplinary field that is located at the interface between human geography and literary studies and is one of the most salient manifestations of the ongoing spatial turn in the arts and humanities. Critical readings of Munro's stories have labeled her literary production "regional," since she sets the majority of her short stories in the area of rural Ontario where she grew up. Until now, however, little attention has been devoted to the role of that location in the stories and tothe way that particular setting interacts with her characters' development or stasis. This collection contains eleven essays organized in two parts: first, Conceptualizing Space and Place: Houses, Landscapes, Territory; and second, Close Readings of Space and Place. Contributors: Corinne Bigot, Lynn Blin, Giuseppina Botta, Fausto Ciompi, Ailsa Cox, Christine Lorre-Johnston, Robert McGill, Claire Omhovère, Anca-Raluca Radu, Eleonora Rao, Caterina Ricciardi. Christine Lorre-Johnston is a senior lecturer in English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. Eleonora Rao teaches English and American literatures at the University of Salerno.Trade Review[B]ooks such as Space and Place in Alice Munro's Fiction may find grateful readerships not only in experienced Canadianists, and especially Munrovians, but also among the younger generation of readers and scholars . Space and Place in Alice Munro's Fiction is a praiseworthy effort and an invitation to further debates. * THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTÉRATURE COMPARÉE *[T]hese articles generate valuable new insights, informed by spatial theory concepts and a new critical vocabulary. * BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Christine Lorre-Johnston and Eleonora Rao Where Do You Think You Are? Alice Munro's Open Houses - Robert McGill "Whose House Is That?" Spaces of Metamorphosis in Alice Munro's Dance of the Happy Shades, Who Do You Think You Are?, and The View from Castle Rock - Eleonora Rao Mapping the Vernacular Landscape in Alice Munro's "What Do You Want to Know For?" and Other Stories - Corinne Bigot Stories in the Landscape Mode: A Reading of Alice Munro's "Lives of Girls and Women," "Walker Brothers Cowboy," and "Lichen" - Claire Omhovère "What Place Is This?" Alice Munro's Fictional Places and Her Place in Fiction - Anca-Raluca Radu "The Emptiness in Place of Her": Space, Absence, and Memory in Alice Munro's Dear Life - Ailsa Cox Down the Rabbit Hole: Revisiting the Topos of the Cave in Alice Munro's Short Stories - Christine Lorre-Johnston Spaces of Utopia and Spaces of Actuality in Alice Munro's "Jakarta" - Fausto Ciompi Spatial Perspectives in Alice Munro's "Passion" - Giuseppina Botta Charting Alice Munro's Terra Incognita: Punctuated Space in "Free Radicals" - Lynn Blin Heterotopy in Alice Munro's "In Sight of the Lake" - Caterina Ricciardi

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Book SynopsisExamines how German-Jewish writers from Eastern Europe who migrated to Germany during or after the Cold War have widened European cultural memory to include the traumas of the Gulag. Preserving the memory of the Holocaust as a moral and ethical limit case is key to the European Union's attempt to construct a pan-European identity. But with the Eastern expansion of the EU, new member states have challenged the Holocaust's singularity, calling for the traumas of the Stalinist Gulag to be acknowledged much more explicitly. Thus even though Europe has been unified politically, it is divided by its diverging perceptions of the past. Jessica Ortner argues that German-Jewish writers from Eastern Europe and the GDR who migrated to Germany as refugees during or after the Cold War have responded critically to the need to widen European cultural memory to include the traumatic experiences of the East. The writers focused on include Katja Petrowskaja, Olga Grjasnowa, Lena Gorelik, Vladimir Vertlib, and Barbara Honigmann. A central focus of the book is the "traveling of memories" from Eastern Europe and the GDR to (Western) Germany and Austria. Introducing the term "literature of mnemonic migration," Ortner asserts that these authors' writings negotiate the mnemonic divide between East and West. They criticize the normative memory politics of both Germany and the Soviet Union and address not only the politically explosive question of how to remember both National Socialism and Communism but also the status of Jews in contemporary Germany.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Writing Against the Backdrop of European Memory Politics after 1989 Part I. Contextualizing Literature of Mnemonic Migration: Political and Aesthetic Settings 1: Politics and Memory: Overcoming the Mnemonic Division of Europe? 2: Setting the Scene: Aesthetic Representations of Europe Part II. Imaginations of Europe-Nazism and Stalinism Rethought 3: Redefining the Jewish Past: Vladimir Vertlib 4: Family Memory as a Vessel of Amnesia: Katja Petrowskaja 5: The East-West Division through the Lens of the Divided Germany: Barbara Honigmann Part III. Contesting Germany's Social Framework of Memory 6: Traumatic Recollections: Olga Grjasnowa 7: Dichotomy as a Principle of Mnemonic Migration: Lena Gorelik Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisNew essays by leading scholars examining today's vibrant and innovative German crime fiction, along with its historical background. Although George Bernard Shaw quipped that "the Germans lack talent for two things: revolution and crime novels," there is a long tradition of German crime fiction; it simply hasn't aligned itself with international trends. Duringthe 1920s, German-language writers dispensed with the detective and focused instead on criminals, a trend that did not take hold in other countries until after 1945, by which time Germany had gone on to produce antidetective novels that were similarly ahead of their time. German crime fiction has thus always been a curious case; rather than follow the established rules of the genre, it has always been interested in examining, breaking, and ultimately rewriting those rules. This book assembles leading international scholars to examine today's German crime fiction. It features innovative scholarly work that matches the innovativeness of the genre, taking up the Regionalkrimi;crime fiction's reimagining and transforming of traditional identities; historical crime fiction that examines Germany's and Austria's conflicted twentieth-century past; and how the newly vibrant Austrian crime fiction ties in with and differentiates itself from its German counterpart. Contributors: Angelika Baier, Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Kyle Frackman, Sascha Gerhards, Heike Henderson, Susanne C. Knittel, Anita McChesney, Traci S. O'Brien,Jon Sherman, Faye Stewart, Magdalena Waligórska. Lynn M. Kutch is Professor of German at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Todd Herzog is Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati.Trade ReviewOpens up both the foreign view of German-language crime literature and the cultural self-descriptions to which [that literature] gives rise. . . . [Also] contains contributions on crime literature 'by women for women,' on feminist crime literature . . . . -- Nele Hoffmann * ARBITRIUM *[C]omprehensive and interesting analysis. . . . For readers in Germany and Austria as well the essays in Tatort Germany should be of great interest [because it allows one] to learn how the German-language detective novel is perceived in the US. I recommend Tatort Germany as an enrichment of any collection of secondary literature on the genre. * CRIMEMAG *This volume offers a rich insight into contemporary German-language crime fiction and its emerging trends. . . . [T]he extensive analysis of currently untranslated texts--with quotations in English--performs an important function, too, especially as it serves to encourage more translations of German-language crime novels in future. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *The volume's focus on contemporary trends in German-language crime fiction offers a welcome corrective to [the widespread lack of knowledge of German-language crime fiction in the English-speaking world], as does its exploration of the 'peculiarly German twists' of the genre in its three sections on place, history, and identity. . . . [R]ich and diverse . . . highly recommended for researchers of genre fiction, whether working in German Studies or beyond: quotations are provided in German and English, and an extensive bibliography[y] direct[s] readers to resources in both languages. . . . -- Katharina Hall * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *[C]onvincingly make[s] a case for the serious scholarly study of your favorite guilty pleasure: those prolific German crime novels that are, in their own idiosyncratic way, every bit as good as their English and Swedish counterparts. By placing twenty-first century German crime fiction into its historical, international and theoretical contexts, Kutch and Herzog-and the volume's contributors-provide a fascinating broader explanation of a current literary phenomenon. -- Rob McFarland * WOMEN IN GERMAN NEWSLETTER *That crime fiction written in German represents a 'curious case' has been established before, but a more wide-reaching case can indeed be made for contemporary German-language crime fiction, and the editors and contributors of this volume succeed in doing so quite admirably. -- Thomas Kniesche * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Lynn M. Kutch and Todd Herzog Vor Ort: The Functions and Early Roots of German Regional Crime - Kyle Frackman Krimi Quo Vadis: Literary and Televised Trends in the German Crime Genre - Sascha Gerhards Plurality and Alterity in wolf Haas's Detective Brenner Mysteries - Jon Sherman The Case of the Austrian Regional Crime Novel - Anita McChesney "Darkness at the Beginning": The Holocaust in Contemporary German Crime Fiction - Magdalena Waligórska Case Histories: The Lagacy of Nazi Euthanasia in Recent German Heimatkrimis - Susanne C. Knittel "Der Fall Loest": A Case Study of Crime Stories and the Public Sphere in the GDR - Carol Anne Costabile-Heming What's in Your Bag?: "Freudian Crimes" and Austria's Nazi Past in Eva Rossmann's Freudsche Verbrechen - Traci S. O'Brien Layered Deviance: Intersexuality in Contemporary German Crime Fiction - Angelika Baier Girls in the Gay Bar: Performing and Policing Identity in Crime Fiction - Faye Stewart Eva Rossmann's Culinary Mysteries - Heike Henderson Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisAnalyzes two groups of "musical novels" -- novels that take music as a model for their construction -- including jazz novels by Toni Morrison and Michael Ondaatje, and novels based on Bach's Goldberg Variations. What is a "musical novel"? This book defines the genre as musical not primarily in terms of its content, but in its form. The musical novel crosses medial boundaries, aspiring to techniques, structures, and impressions similar tothose of music. It takes music as a model for its own construction, borrowing techniques and forms that range from immediately perceptible, essential aspects of music (rhythm, timbre, the simultaneity of multiple voices) to microstructural (jazz riffs, call and response, leitmotifs) and macrostructural elements (themes and variations, symphonies, albums). The musical novel also evokes the performance context by imitating elements of spontaneity that characterize improvised jazz or audience interaction. The Musical Novel builds upon theories of intermediality and semiotics to analyze the musical structures, forms, and techniques in two groups of musical novels, which serve as case studies. The first group imitates an entire musical genre and consists of jazz novels by Toni Morrison, Albert Murray, Xam Wilson Cartiér, Stanley Crouch, Jack Fuller, Michael Ondaatje, and Christian Gailly. The secondgroup of novels, by Richard Powers, Gabriel Josipovici, Rachel Cusk, Nancy Huston, and Thomas Bernhard, imitates a single piece of music, J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Emily Petermann is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Konstanz.Trade Review[R]ecommends itself to literary or music libraries, as well as to all those interested in the sounds and structures of the contemporary Anglo-American novel. * AMERIKASTUDIEN *[A] necessary work of methodology, refining and clarifying prior attempts at intermedial analysis into a toolset that offers much as a foundation for future works of criticism. * H-MUSIC *For the scholar of musical fiction, this book is of great interest. * JIVE-TALK.COM *[O]f significant interest not only to the literary scholar but also to the philosopher of art. . . . Petermann's exploration of th[e] literary subgenre [of the 'musical novel'], defined as 'musical not primarily in terms of its content, but in its very form' (p.2) invites us to rethink a series of classical problems - the essence of music, boundaries of art forms, musical sense and meaning, the relation between music and language - through the lens of these peculiar textual artworks. * UNIVERSA. RECENSIONI DI FILOSOFIA *Selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2014 * . *[A]n important contribution to the field of word and music studies. . . . Petermann offers a theory of intermediality that standardizes the features of novels that 'transpos[e] elements of music.' . . . . [E]xpertly crafted. . . . If for no other reason, one should read The Musical Novel to enjoy the author's elegant language --Petermann's prose was music to this reviewer's ears. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Petermann makes a strong and patient case for a thriving tradition of intermediality, and one - this is what distinguishes her book from earlier passes at the subject - that crucially involves audience expectations and reception as part of the equation: knowing the Goldberg Variations or a particular jazz standard provides a subliminal framework for fictional improvisation which a reader unfamiliar with the music might lack. * TLS *The musical knowledge that Petermann displays throughout her book is as sound as her literary background: this promotes illuminating insights for readers coming from both worlds. . . . [Her] theory of intermediality is entirely persuasive and plausible, and as such it is highly useful to anybody seeking to expand further the field of word and music studies. Overall . . . a most thoughtful and comprehensive formalist approach to intermediality in general and the musical novel in particular. * MUSIC & LETTERS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Theorizing the Musical Novel Elements of Sound in Jazz Novels Structural Patterns in Jazz Novels The Performance Situation in Jazz Novels Structural Patterns in Novels Based on the Goldberg Variations Composition, Performance, and Reception in Novels Based on the Goldberg Variations Conclusion Appendix: Diagrams of Intermediality in Selected Novels Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisTracks the genesis and evolution of Twain's reputation as a writer, revealing how and why the writer has been "under fire" since the advent of his career. Threatened by a rival editor brandishing a double-barreled shotgun, young Samuel Clemens had his first taste of literary criticism. Clemens began his long writing career penning satirical articles for his brother's newspaper in Hannibal, Missouri. His humor delighted everyone except his targets, and it would not be the last time his writing provoked threats of "dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head shot off." Clemens adopted the name Mark Twain while living in the Nevada Territory, where his caustic comedy led to angry confrontations, a challenge to a duel, and a subsequent flight. Nursing his wounded ego in California, Twain vowed to develop a reputation that would"stand fire" and in the process became the classic American writer. Mark Twain under Fire tracks the genesis and evolution of Twain's reputation as a writer: his reception as a humorist, his "return fire" on genteel critics, and the development of academic criticism. As a history of Twain criticism, the book draws on English and foreign-language scholarship. Fulton discusses the forces and ideas that have influenced criticism, revealinghow and why Mark Twain has been "under fire" from the advent of his career to the present day, when his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn remains one of America's most frequently banned books. Joe B. Fulton is Professor of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has published four previous books on Mark Twain.Trade ReviewFulton gives an excellent account of the difficulties faced by nineteenth-century American scholars . . . who wanted both to establish American literature on strong 'native' ground yet struggled to recognize that ground in Calaveras County, or a Colorado silver mine, or on the banks of the Mississippi. * TLS *Table of ContentsIntroduction "A Reputation That Can Stand Fire": Mark Twain's Early Reception through 1910 "All Right, Then, I'll Go to Hell": Mark Twain's Disputed Legacy, 1910-1950 "Only One Right Form for a Story": Mark Twain and Cold War Criticism, 1950-1970 "Everyone Is a Moon, and Has a Dark Side": New Phases of Mark Twain Criticism from the 1970s through the 1980s "It Is Difference of Opinion That Makes Horse-Races": Mark Twain as a Partisan in the Culture Wars, 1990s to 2015 Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the controversial German author's works. When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum. SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible, blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press (and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception of Grass's works. Siegfried Mews is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Trade ReviewWinner, CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award, 2008 * . *An important contribution to the facilitation of further Grass research. Indispensable to those working in the field. Sets new methodological standards for tertiary literature on the reception of a modern writer's fictional oeuvre. * ARBITRIUM *As a prolific author and also graphic artist and performer, Grass has earned both intense critical responses from the media, in Germany and abroad, and vast amounts of scholarship. Mews's first-rate, well-organized guide to and overview of this literature ... is nuanced, balanced, and sophisticated, making this a treasure trove of information. * CHOICE *This volume will be an indispensable resource for anyone seeking quick and dependable orientation in the vast body of Grass scholarship. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Mews's book more than achieves the goals it sets itself and provides a valuable work of reference for Grass scholarship. * H-NET *[W]ill be an essential research tool for all future Grass critics, having something to teach to even his most experienced readers. * MONATSHEFTE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Die Blechtrommel / The Tin Drum Katz und Maus / Cat and Mouse Hundejahre / Dog Years Danziger Trilogie / The Danzig Trilogy Örtlich betäubt / Local Anaesthetic Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke / From the Diary of a Snail Der Butt / The Flounder Das Treffen in Telgte / The Meeting at Telgte Kopfgeburten oder Die Deutschen sterben aus / Headbirths or The Germans Are Dying Out Die Rättin / The Rat Zunge zeigen / Show Your Tongue Unkenrufe / The Call of the Toad Ein weites Feld / Too Far Afield Mein Jahrhundert / My Century Im Krebsgang / Crabwalk Epilogue Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisExplores the storytelling of Anna Seghers and other 20th-century writers who faced the tensions between aesthetics and politically conscious writing, between conformity and resistance. While Walter Benjamin, in his famous essay "The Storyteller" (1936), lamented the decline of the storytelling tradition in the age of the modernist novel, Anna Seghers and other twentieth-century German writers went on to chronicle the century's darkest days in creative and compelling ways. This volume is at its heart a tribute to Germanist Helen Fehervary, whose work, particularly on the prose of Anna Seghers, continues to inspire scholars who examine narration and storytelling. The subtitle quotation, "for once, telling it all from the beginning," is a translation of the phrase "einmal alles von Anfang an erzählen," from Seghers's exile novel Transit, in which she told notonly her own story but that of countless others who faced existential challenges in their attempts to escape the Nazi regime. This volume examines a number of such writers, exploring the tensions between aesthetics and politically conscious writing, as well as individual struggles involving conformity and resistance in a totalitarian state. Contributors: Peter Beicken, Hunter Bivens, Kristy R. Boney, Ute Brandes, Stephen Brockmann, Sylvia Fischer, Jost Hermand, Kristen Hetrick, Robert C. Holub, Weijia Li, Elizabeth Loentz, Michaela Peroutková, Benjamin Robinson, Christiane Zehl Romero, Marc Silberman, Andy Spencer, Luke Springman, Amy Kepple Strawser, Jennifer Marston William. Kristy R. Boney is Associate Professor of German at the University of Central Missouri. Jennifer Marston William is Professor of German and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Social, Political, and Personal Dimensions of Storytelling - Kristy R. Boney and Jennifer Marston William PART I. ANNA SEGHERS: A MISSING PIECE IN THE CANON OF MODERNIST STORYTELLERS Anna Seghers in Heidelberg: The Formative Years - Christiane Zehl Romero Who Is the Narrator? Anna Seghers's "The Excursion of the Dead Girls": Narrative Mode and Cinematic Depiction - Peter Beicken Anna Seghers's Rubble Literature, 1947-49 - Ute Brandes Anna Seghers and the Struggle to Tell Stories about the Nazi Past in the Early German Democratic Republic - Stephen Brockmann Aufbauzeit or flaue Zeit? Anna Seghers's GDR Novels - Hunter Bivens The Time of Decision in Anna Seghers - Benjamin Robinson Filling the Void with Stories: Anna Seghers's Conceptual Metaphors - Jennifer Marston William PART II. EXPRESSIONS OF MODERNITY: USING STORYTELLING UNCONVENTIONALLY Storytelling and Telling Stories in Heine's Prose Fiction - Robert C. Holub Modernist Haze: Topographical Textures in Paul Klee and Franz Kafka - Kristy R. Boney Synthesis and Transtextuality: The Jewish Reinvention of Chinese Mythical Stories in "Shanghai Ghetto" - Weijia Li American Children Writing Yiddish: The Published Anthologies of the Chicago Sholem Aleichem Schools - Elizabeth Loentz A Literary Depiction of the Homeland of Jews in Czechoslovakia and East Germany after 1945 - Michaela Peroutkova Changed for the Better? Alternative Uses of the Transformative Cancer Trope in Thomas Mann's Die Betrogene and Nadine Gordimer's Get a Life - Kristen Hetrick PART III. THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE: STORYTELLING IN ACUTE HISTORICAL MOMENTS Problems and Effects of Autobiographical Storytelling: Als Pimpf in Polen: Erweiterte Kinderlandverschickung 1940-1945 (1993) and A Hitler Youth in Poland: The Nazis' Program for Evacuating Children during World War II (1998) - Jost Hermand Too Near, Too Far: My GDR Story - Marc Silberman Conflict without Resolution: Konrad Wolf and the Dilemma of Hatred - Andy Spencer "Bleibt noch ein Lied zu singen": Autobiographical and Cultural Memory in Christa Wolf's Novel Kindheitsmuster - Luke Springman Narrating Germany's Past: A Story of Exile and the Return Home-A Translation of the Chapter "Above the Lake" from Ursula Krechel's Novel Landgericht - Amy Kepple Strawser Storytelling in the GDR: An Interview with Eberhard Aurich and Christa Streiber-Aurich - Sylvia Fischer Notes on the Contributors

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Book SynopsisWith the disappearance of the eyewitness generation and the globalization of Holocaust memory, this book interrogates key concepts in Holocaust and trauma studies through an assessment of contemporary German-language Jewish authors. In the shifting media landscape of the twenty-first century, the second and third generations of German-language Jewish authors are grappling with the disappearance of the eyewitness generation and the hyper-mediation and globalization of Holocaust memory. Benjamin Stein, Maxim Biller, Vladmir Vertlib, and Eva Menasse each experiment with new approaches towards Holocaust representation and the Nazi past. This book investigates major shifts in Holocaust memory since the turn of the millennium, and argues that the works of these authors call for a much-needed reassessment of key concepts and terms in Holocaust discourse such as authenticity, empathy, normalization, representation, traumatic unspeakability, and postmemory. Drawing on current research in media, memory, cultural, and literary studies, Maria Roca Lizarazu develops a fresh approach which challenges the dominant focus on traumatic unspeakability by engaging with the culturally mediated travels of transgenerational and transnational contemporary Holocaust memory. Roca Lizarazu pays special attention to ethical and aesthetic challenges of contemporary Holocaust memory and how these are addressed in the medium of contemporary German-language literature. This book offers a critical new perspective on the central paradigms informing recent Holocaust and trauma studies scholarship and, in doing so, provides novel insights into a new generational approach towards Holocaust remembrance and representation. MARIA ROCA LIZARAZU is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, UK.Trade ReviewMaria Roca Lizarazu's Renegotiating Postmemory is impressive in the breadth of its theoretical engagement with current post-Holocaust memory and media discourses. -- Charlotte Schallié * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Holocaust Memory in the New Millennium-Between Continuity and Change Rethinking Testimony: Authenticity, Travelling Memories, and Post-Holocaust Jewish Identities in Benjamin Stein's Die Leinwand "Im Land der Väter und Verräter": Intertextuality, Influence, and the Problem of Symbiosis in Maxim Biller's Writing Contrapuntal Memory, Dialogism, and Irony: Challenges to Transnationalism in Vladimir Vertlib's Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur From the Family to the Meta-Memorial Novel: Eva Menasse's Fiction Conclusion: The Critique of the Critique of Representation: Self- and Metareflexivity in Contemporary Holocaust Fiction

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Book SynopsisA comparative study of "inner" and "territorial" forms of literary exile under Nazism and Francoism, proposing an integrative model of exile that emphasizes common approaches and themes rather than division. Writers opposed to National Socialism or Francoism have been considered either territorial exiles, who left their country, or "inner exiles," who did not. Those who stayed were initially accorded greater status, while those who left were denigrated. With time, however, there was a growing recognition of the hardship and achievements of territorial exiles and increasing criticism of inner exiles. Later critical debates have perpetuated this fissure and failed to explore the similar origins and assumptions of the two forms of exile. This book adopts a unique cross-cultural approach, illuminating the shared roots of opposition across the two cultures and exilic settings. It challenges the traditional divide, demonstrating striking similarities in terminology, exilic identities, and literary concerns, between not only "inner" and "outer" but also the German and Spanish contexts. The study offers new perspectives on the literary historiography of twentieth-century Germany and Spain, showing how, in the impact and consequences of dictatorship, the histories of the two countries intersect. It is thus of interest to literary historiansand students of German and Spanish literature, and it also, because it provides English translations of all quotations, serves as an introduction for English-speaking readers to this poorly understood phenomenon and its implications for other exilic settings. Mónica Jato is Reader and John Klapper is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, UK.Trade ReviewFractured Frontiers benefits from the successful positioning and argumentation of the authors on comparative subjects not typically paired together. . . . The authors challenge the frameworks not only of how we define exile writing, but also how we look at the bookended periods of time isolating the Nazi and Francoist regimes. This book touches areas of scholarship such as history, literature, exile, migration and politics, alongside Hispanic, German and European studies, and will be suited for a diverse audience, from those interested in the postwar impact of dictatorship to readers of exile writing. -- Gina Benavidez * H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I. Overarching Issues Cultural Contexts Exile: The Temptation of the Trope Part II. The Uses of History German Historical Narratives in Inner and Territorial Exile Historical Uses of Myth in 1940s Spanish Poetry Part III. A Complicated Return Blurring of the Lines: The Complexities of Return to Germany Destiempo: The Challenges of a Long Return in the Spanish Context Conclusion

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Book SynopsisTraces Hemingway's critical fortunes over the ninety years of his prominence, telling us something about what we value in literature and why scholarly reputations rise and fall. Hemingway burst on the literary scene in the 1920s with spare, penetrating short stories and brilliant novels. Soon he was held as a standard for modern writers. Meanwhile, he used his celebrity to create a persona like the stoic,macho heroes of his fiction. After a decline during the 1930s and 1940s, he came roaring back with The Old Man and the Sea in 1952. Two years later he received the Nobel Prize. While his popularity waxed and waned during his lifetime, Hemingway's reputation among scholars remained strong as long as traditional scholarship dominated. New approaches beginning in the 1960s brought a sea change, however, finding grave fault with his work and making him a figure ripe for vilification. Yet during this time scholarship on him continued to appear. His works still sell well, and several are staples on high-school and college syllabi. A new scholarly edition of his letters is drawing prominent attention, and there is a resurgence in scholarly attention to - and approbation for - his work. Tracing Hemingway's critical fortunes tells us something about what we value in literature and why reputations rise and fall as scholars find new ways to examine and interpret creative work.Trade Review[A] treat. . . . The Critics and Hemingway is a major resource for Hemingway studies, one that I will regularly reach for and send my students to. -- Alex Vernon * JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES *Mazzeno has succeeded in generating an engaging and highly readable - yet also very useful - narrative, for which we can all be grateful. * THE HEMINGWAY REVIEW *[A] rigorously researched reference book to be consulted when one wants to learn who said what and when about Hemingway. . . . [T]he strength of the text . . . lies in its cumulative effect. Taking on the task which must have been a very laborious one, carrying the burden of a big amount of material to be considered with enthusiasm, the book certainly deserves a good and easily accessible place on Hemingway library shelves. * POLISH JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES *By critiquing critical assessments, Mazzeno identifies the predilections and biases shaping [critics'] judgments, uncovering the forces that sustain Hemingway's reputation as both a literary and cultural icon. * AMERICAN LITERATURE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: "The Most Interesting Man in the World" Spokesperson for the Lost Generation (1924-1932) Writing on His Own Terms (1932-1952) The Critics' Darling (1952-1961) Posthumous Evaluations (1961-1969) Turbulence (1970-1979) Calm Before the Storm (1980-1985) A "Sea Change" in Hemingway Studies (1986-1990) "Hemingway": Site for Competing Theories (1991-1999) Old Themes, New Discoveries (2000-2010) The Undisputed Champ Once More (2011-2014) Conclusion: The Enduring Master Major Works by Ernest Hemingway Works Cited

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Book SynopsisThe first book to examine the connection between gender and memory in Grass's oeuvre, which is especially timely in light of current concerns about male privilege. Günter Grass (1927-2015) was a fixture at the heart of German cultural life, a self-styled spokesman of the Kulturnation (cultural nation) who imagined it linking him to canonical male literary figures and their authority. He was also the object of valid feminist criticism: a rigid conception of gender permeates his works, belying his professed skepticism toward ideologies. A heterosexual male, Grass lent his representative persona a natural veneer by appropriating his era's gendered discursive constructs, including Heimat, the Bildungsroman, and narratives about German wartime victims and perpetrators. Such appropriation elevated his remembering artist's masculinity above that of the status quo's defenders and exploiters of memory. This book is the first to evaluate the connection between gender and memory in Grass's oeuvre and its legacy in light of current concerns about male privilege. It highlights his breakthrough novel The Tin Drum (1959) and his memoir Peeling the Onion (2006). The former establishes the gendered persona that Grass would develop in subsequent decades to relate contemporary issues to Nazi-era memories. The latter reclaims the novel's autobiographical material but fails to account for his decades-long silence about having served in the Nazi Waffen-SS. Instead, it foregrounds his mourning for his mother, allowing for a more personal reading of his oeuvre and its gendered imagery.Trade ReviewTimothy Malchow's study is a noteworthy, timely and needed contribution to the existing scholarship on Grass as it approaches his oeuvre through the lens of memory and gender, two concepts that are - so Malchow's core argument - inextricably linked in Grass's works. -- MONATSHEFTEMalchow's book is original, even ground-breaking, in showing how Grass draws on two fundamentally German modes of discourse, the Bildungsroman and the Heimat motif (often enacted in another prose genre, the Heimatroman) to shape his narratives and guide his exploration of German memory, particularly as it relates to the question of guilt and innocence, victimhood and perpetration, with respect to the period of National Socialist rule. . . . [The book] constitutes a noteworthy contribution to Grass scholarship . . . . Excellent . . . . -- John Pizer * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Including admirably researched considerations of literary genres, education, homeland (Heimat), memory, trauma, and sexuality, this is a multifaceted and satisfying portrait of the literary artist as a man. -- J. M. Jeep * CHOICE *Throughout his book, Malchow makes a strong case for the connection between gender-coded imagery and the process of memory and memory creation in the two works. . . . By establishing the link between gender and memory, Malchow opens an additional avenue for Grass scholars to explore in assessing the author's work. -- Adrian Chubb * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations, Translations, and Transcriptions Introduction Grass's Biography in Context: 1927-1959 Corporeal Memory, Trauma, and Art in The Tin Drum Bildung, Heimat, and Gendered Modes of German Memory in The Tin Drum A Patriarchal Arbiter of German Cultural Memory and His Feminized Others: Leveling Bildung, Opening Heimat, and Championing Art from the 1960s to the New Millennium Grass's Early Life Once Again: Broken Silence, Mourning, and Gendered Approaches to Memory in Peeling the Onion Epilogue Works Cited

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Book SynopsisShows how postwar writers in Austria and Yugoslavia re-imagined the concept of Mitteleuropa, Central Europe, as a cultural space between nostalgia and totalitarianism. The German term Mitteleuropa, or Central Europe, was never just a geographical concept: it connoted extending German influence to the east. In the 1980s, the eastern European dissident writers György Konrád, Czesław Miłosz, and Milan Kundera revived the concept to counter a perceived Cold War memory vacuum, aligning themselves with the multiethnic and multilingual legacy of the Habsburg Empire. Their observations gave rise to a protracted public debate that posited literature against politics. This debate was both anticipated and expanded upon in postwar literary works by Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, and Christoph Ransmayr in Austria, and Danilo Kiš, Aleksandar Tišma, and Dubravka Ugrešić in (the former) Yugoslavia, all of whom questioned notions of geographic identity and national allegiance by imagining Mitteleuropa as a cultural space between nostalgia and totalitarianism. Yvonne Zivkovic draws on space and memory studies to show how Mitteleuropa emerged as an alternate memory discourse that reveals deep ties between the Second Austrian Republic and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The writers discussed address the major themes of the 1980s debate - traumatic memory, geographic displacement, and transnationalism - but also share a literary aesthetics that privileges the intersections of prose fiction and the essay, the literary fragment, and intertextuality. Zivkovic's book shows the persistence of Mitteleuropa as a literary network and as a cultural collective that examines civic values against public tendencies of memory manipulation.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations and Note on Translations Introduction: Mitteleuropa as a Transnational Memory Discourse The Legacy of Mitteleuropa: Between Geopolitics and Geopoetics Ingeborg Bachmann and Peter Handke: The Austrian Periphery and Mitteleuropa Mitteleuropa as Conflicted Community in the Writings of Danilo Kis and Aleksandar Tisma Mitteleuropa after 1989. New Memory Challenges in Christoph Ransmayr and Dubravka Ugresi? Conclusion: Mitteleuropa Literature in the 21st Century: Revisiting the Promise of Border-Crossing Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExamines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their adaptations, and also attending to the wide range of his published work. Twenty-first-century readers, television viewers, and moviegoers know Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most recognizable fictional detective. Holmes's enduring popularity has kept Conan Doyle in the public eye. However, Holmes has taken on a life of his own, generating a steady stream of critical commentary, while Conan Doyle's other works are slighted or ignored. Yet the Holmes stories make up only a small portion of Conan Doyle's published work, which includes mainstream and historical fiction; history; drama; medical, spiritualist, and political tracts; and even essays on photography. When Doyle published - whatever the subject - his contemporaries took note. Yet, outside of the fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, until recently relatively little has been done to analyze the reception Conan Doyle's work received during his lifetime and since his death. This book examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their many adaptations for print, visual, and online media, but attending to his other contributions to turn-of-the-twentieth-century culture as well. The availability of periodicals and newspapers online makes it possible to develop an assessment of Conan Doyle's (and Sherlock Holmes's) reputation among a wider readership and viewership, thus allowing for development of a broader and more accurate portrait of Doyle's place in literary and cultural history.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Notes on Usage and Documentation Introduction: The Complicated Afterlives of Doyle and Holmes 1: The Emergence of a Popular Writer (1879-1900) 2: New Ventures (1901-1930) 3: Decades of Critical Neglect (1931-1970) 4: Traditional Readings, New Theoretical Critiques (1971-1990) 5: Achieving Respectability among Critics (1991-2000) 6: Twenty-First Century Critiques I (2001-2010) 7: Twenty-First Century Critiques II (2011-2020) 8: Future Directions Appendix: Sherlockian Scholarship and Activities Chronological List of Arthur Conan Doyle's Major Publications Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisWINNER of the 2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Volume of new essays investigating Kleist's influences and sources both literary and philosophical, their role as paradigms, and the ways in which he responded to and often shattered them. Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was a rebel who upset canonization by employing his predecessors and contemporaries as what Steven Howe calls "inspirational foils." It was precisely a keen awareness of literary and philosophical traditions that allowed Kleist to shatter prevailing paradigms. Though little is known about what specifically Kleist read, the frequent allusions in his enduringly modern oeuvre indicate fruitful dialogues with both canonical and marginal works of European literature, spanning antiquity (The Old Testament, Sophocles), the Early Modern Period (Shakespeare, De Zayas), the late Enlightenment (Wieland, Goethe, Schiller), and the first eleven years of the nineteenth century (Mereau, Brentano, Collin). Kleist's works also evidence encounters with his philosophical precursors and contemporaries, including the ancient Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.Trade ReviewSurprising, original, and eminently readable, this is an outstanding addition to serious scholarship about an author whose work is increasingly significant for contemporary readers. Highly recommended. * CHOICE MAGAZINE *Table of ContentsForeword: A Note on Kleist in American Art, Film, and Literature - Paul Michael Lützeler Acknowledgments Introduction: Kleist's Literary and Philosophical Paradigms = Jeffrey L. High, Rebecca Stewart, and Elaine Chen Part I. Kleist's Literary Paradigms In the Beginning: Kleist, Genesis, Kafka, and the Pursuit of Epistemological Salvation - Gail K. Hart Just Violence? War, Law, and Politics in Kleist's Die Herrmannsschlacht and Shakespeare's Henry V - Steven Howe The Mereau-Brentano Translations of María de Zayas's "Spanish Novellas" and Kleist's Prose Works - Jeffrey L. High and Lisa Beesley The Old and the New: Christoph Martin Wieland and Kleist on Parteigeist - John A. McCarthy Receptions, Homages, and Anti-Occupational Allegories of Autonomy: The Case of Schiller's Bohemian Cup and Kleist's Broken Jug - Jeffrey L. High and Elaine Chen Anti-Napoleonic Rage and the Hope for a Better Future: Collin between Schiller and Kleist - Rebecca Stewart Part II: Kleist's Philosophical Paradigms Fiat claritas et pereat opus: Equity and the Limits of Rectification in Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas - John T. Hamilton Kleist, Johann Joachim Spalding and the Bestimmung des Menschen: Philosophy as a Way of Life? - Laura Anna Macor War Games: Kleist, Adam Ferguson, and the Cultural Poetics of Play - Christian Moser Economic Concepts and Authorial Self-Design in Heinrich von Kleist's Letters - Johannes Endres Gender and the Politics of Recognition in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right and Kleist's Amphitryon - Bernd Fischer Kleist and Haiti - With and Beyond Hegel - Katrin Pahl Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisEmphasizing the role of and portrayal of emotion, this study argues for the inclusion of six late-eighteenth-century German-language novels by and about women in a revised canon. Literature written by women in German during the "Age of Goethe" was largely considered unworthy Trivialliteratur. Using insights from Gender Studies yet acknowledging the need for a literary canon, Great Books by German Women offers a critical interpretation of six canon-worthy German novels written by women in the period, which it calls the "Age of Emotion." The novels are chosen because they depict women's ordinary yet interesting lives and because each contains prose particularly expressive of emotion. Sophie von La Roche's Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim draws on the tradition of the epistolary novel while finding new ways to depict empathetic emotions. Friederike Unger's Julchen Grünthal brings to the Frauenroman or women's novel the use of irony to portray a heroine's emotions during her coming of age. Sophie Mereau's Blütenalter der Empfindung imagines women's affinity for the philosophical sublime, while Caroline Wolzogen depicts female desire in her Agnes von Lilien: both add lyricism to their prose, capturing sensual emotions. Karoline Fischer's Die Honigmonathe explores the agony that extreme emotions cause - not only for women but for men. And Caroline Pichler's Frauenwürde expands the focus from a young heroine to multiple mature characters. This study concludes that the influence of these six works was in no way trivial, either in portraying women's lives and emotions or in the history of German literature.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Passion and Prejudice: Toward a New Literary Canon for the German Novel 1: An Anglophile Fräulein and Her Epistolary Emotions: Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771) by Sophie von La Roche 2: Reading for Pleasure vs. Reading for Pain: Julchen Grünthal: Eine Pensionsgeschichte (1784) by Friederike Unger 3: Sympathy for the Sublime: Das Blütenalter der Empfindung (1794) by Sophie Mereau 4: The Legitimacy of Passionate Narrative and the Metanarrative of Anonymity: Agnes von Lilien (1796) by Caroline von Wolzogen 5: Monstrous Pathos and the Agony of Female Influence: Die Honigmonathe(1804) by Caroline Fischer 6: Adultery Rewarded: Women's Emotions and Men's Indignity in Frauenwürde (1818) by Caroline Pichler Conclusion: Great Books, Or: The Laurel Wreath as a Mixed Blessing Appendix A: Publication Information and Plot Summaries, Chronologically Listed Appendix B: Biographies of the Novelists Bibliography Index

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