Description
Book SynopsisExamines the fear of materiality in German-language realist and postrealist literature. The book argues that with German literature's turn in the mid-nineteenth century to the depiction of the profane, sensual world, anxiety emerged about the terms of that depiction.
Trade ReviewAt the Limit of the Obscene is a masterful study of the concept of obscenity, in both its historical and theoretical permutations, as it played out in the tradition of nineteenth-century German realist literature and its afterlife in the early twentieth century. Weitzman moves with enviable grace through the German intellectual tradition from Kant forward, weaving in references to legal cases and contemporary critical interventions, and with great originality leads the discussion into the equally important tradition of French phenomenology." - Eric Downing, author of
The Chain of Things: Divinatory Magic and the Practice of Reading in German Literature and Thought, 1850-1940"In her impeccably researched and elegantly written book, Weitzman uses the category of the obscene to unlock Poetic Realism's contradictions as well as its solutions. Mandatory reading for all those interested in 19th-century German prose and, more generally, in questions of materialism and literature." - Eva Geulen, author of
The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after HegelTable of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: 'Scenes that do not belong in the light of day'
- 1. Against Nature: Adalbert Stifter
- 2. Base Matter: Gustav Freytag
- 3. Iconoclasm and Iconolatry: Theodor Fontane
- 4. Presence as Profanation: Arno Holz
- 5. Dead Ends: Gottfried Benn
- 6. Filth: Franz Kafka
- Coda: "As if she were saying something shameless"
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
