Description
Book SynopsisSelf-reflection is fundamental for human thinking on many levels. Philosophy has described the mind's capacity to observe itself as a core element of human existence. Political and social sciences have shown how modern democracies depend on society's ability to critically reflect on their own values and practices. And literature of all ages has proven self-reflexivity to be a crucial trait of cultural production. This volume provides the first diachronic panorama of genres, forms, and functions of literary self-reflection and their connections with social, political and philosophical discourses from the 17th century to the present. Far beyond the usual focus on postmodernist opacity, these contributions present a rich tradition of critical transparency: Literary texts that show us what is behind and beyond them.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction Read Thyself: Cultural Self-reflection and the Relevance of Literary “Self”-labels Florian Lippert and Marcel Schmid Reflections on Reflection Autoreferentiality, Autoreflexivity, Selftransparency Oliver Jahraus – 1600 – 1 Cervantes’s and Unamuno’s Metalepsis Hope Unraveled in Don Quixote: Self-Reflexivity and the Problem of Metalepsis in Cervantes, Unamuno, and Bloch Konstantin Mierau – 1700 – 2 Hamann’s Latent Parrhesia Intertextual Exploration of the Self in Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten Andrea Krauss 3 Klopstock’s Historiography Written out of Time: Inventing What Happened in Klopstock Kristina Mendicino – 1800 – 4 Kleist’s Performativity Transmission Kleist Marcel Schmid 5 Mallarmé’s Rhetoric Allegorical Self-Reflexivity in Mallarmé’s Sonnet en-x Evelyn Dueck 6 Nietzsche’s Masks “Aber ich notire mich, für mich”: Nietzsche and Self-Reflection Barbara Naumann – 1900 – 7 Celan and the Timeless A Secret Echo Outside of Time: Paul Celan and the Autumn Crocus Jason Kavett Letter from Paul Celan to Gisèle Celan-Lestrange Translated by Jason Kavett 8 Pastior’s Poetics The Medium of Poetry Jörg Kreienbrock – 2000 – 9 Fforde’s Intermediality Books Without Borders: Self-Referentiality and Intermedial Games in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series Vera Alexander 10 Autobiographies: Kureishi, Miller, Wiebe, Coetzee, and Bechdel Self-Reflexivity in Contemporary English Auto/Biographies Anne Rüggemeier 11 Brandt’s and Ja, Panik’s Auto-fiction “Only half of what I am saying is true:” Deconstructing Authorial Authority in Contemporary German Literature Antonius Weixler Index
