German Literature Commons^™

“Über Die Liebe”: Love And Sex According To Eduard Von Keyserling, Caroline Urvater

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation is built around an annotated translation of Eduard von Keyserling’s 1907 essay, “Über die Liebe.” The author’s citations are often made from memory and consequently, are not always entirely accurate. This fact is discussed and inaccuracies are corrected.

Chapter One begins with an overview of the historical background of the Keyserling family. It includes biographical material that describes the author’s life and experiences, and introduces his illustrious forbears. It also points to the writers and philosophers who influenced the author’s thinking.

Chapter Two, a review of the literature, discusses some of the dissertations, articles ...

Blitz Aus Heiterm Himmel: Monstrous Femininity And The Illusion Of Gender Equality In The Gdr, Sarah Bonoff

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The anthology Blitz aus heiterm Himmel was published in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1975. It includes short stories written by both men and women in which the protagonist undergoes a miraculous gender change of sorts. While the various authors take different approaches to the concept of gender, there are themes that tie the stories together. In the stories that scholars have analyzed, their analyses generally focus on either the portrayal of men and the role of masculinity, or the discourse of women in science. I instead chose to focus on and analyze three of these short stories (“Selbstversuch ...

Bauer Statt Prinzessinnen: Das Volk Als Thema Und Seine Darstellung In Den Kinder- Und Hausmärchen, Rachel Lynne Schilling

Honors Theses By Year

This research looks into the role and presentation of the “Volk” in the fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers. These fairy tales, first published in 1812, then revised, and republished 7 times until 1857, feature the attempts of the Grimm Brothers to collect and shape German folklore and literature during the influential literary moment of Romanticism. By drawing on philosophical and historical sources, this research works to define the German word “Volk” as the lower classes, which, at the time of the Grimm Brothers, was composed largely of farmers. This research therefore traces the Grimm Brother’s conception of the ...

Ästhetiken Der Störung. Störungsphänomene Bei Kroetz, Turrini Und Mitterer, Manuel Foerderer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Theory Of Associations: An Explanation And Applications To Wagner's Das Rheingold, Parker T. Gordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis posits an interdisciplinary theory of associations. Within inter- and intra-textual texts, there exists a presence that points toward an originating source, which audience members may or may not consciously recognize. This presence accumulates associations from surrounding materials through abstract and subtle references or through direct quotations. These associations, once examined in relation to one another in the context of the narrative, may help readers discover additional insights and uncover new information about a text. My theory draws upon literary scholarship primarily grounded in intertextual theory and adaptation theory. Inspired by the intertextual insertion of pre-existing music in film ...

Using ‘Travel’ To Deliver The Ideas Of A Revolution: Written Works Of German Romantic Sophie Mereau, Alison P. Hosey

Honors Scholar Theses

For German Romantic Sophie Mereau (1770-1806), the theme of travel not only provides flexibility within the narrative but it also gives an avenue for character development. In her literary works Das Blütenalter der Empfindung (1794) and Die Flucht nach der Hauptstadt (1806), Mereau writes about travel as a means of liberating her female protagonists as well as encouraging political discourse within the writing. Although Mereau’s literature follows romantic plotlines, various political statements can be found within her writing. Many characters clearly vocalize their dismay at the state of human rights in late eighteenth-century Europe, particularly with regard to religious ...

The Roma And Sinti In Germany: Orientalism And Exclusion From German Historical Narratives (Romantisiert, Kriminalisiert, Und Abgewertet: Orientalismus Und Narrative Der Roma Und Sinti In Deutschland), Kimberly A. Longfellow

Celebration

The Roma and Sinti represent presence and absence in German culture. Although there has been a population of Roma and Sinti in Germany for centuries, they are often perceived by the German majority population as distinctly "eastern" and, as such, non-German. The perceptions of Roma by the German majority population mimic Orientalist assumptions, where the Roma are romanticized, criminalized, and generally devalued in comparison to Eurocentric narratives. Through an analysis of the Roma presence in German history, literature, and current events, one can see that the experience of the Roma in Germany is largely structured by the perceptions and assumptions ...

Inhabiting The Discourses Of Belonging; Franz Kafka And Yoko Tawada, Aviv Hilbig-Bokaer

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark

Inhabiting the Discourses of Belonging; Franz Kafka and Yoko Tawada examines the role of language in creating the identity of the foreigner in German prose. Writing at opposite ends of the 20^th century, Kafka and Tawada serve as harbingers for a broader sense of alienation that comes with writing as an Other. Using lenses provided by Spivak, Butler, Said and Deluze, this essay surveys the broader cultural concepts and theoretical implications of the notion of the metaphorical subaltern that can be created in prose, and the particularities presented by the German language in creating and articulating this identity. This ...

Shifting Understandings Of Lesbianism In Imperial And Weimar Germany, Meghan C. Paradis

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark

This paper seeks to understand how, and why, understandings of lesbianism shifted in Germany over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through close readings of both popular cultural productions and medical and psychological texts produced within the context of Imperial and Weimar Germany, this paper explores the changing nature of understandings of homosexuality in women, arguing that over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the dominant conceptualization of lesbianism transformed from an understanding of lesbians that was rooted in biology and viewed lesbians as physically masculine “gender inverts”, to one that was ...

The Genesis Of The Sonderweg, Annie Everett

International Social Science Review

The precarious legacy of National Socialism has informed much, if not all, of German historiography in the decades since Fritz Fischer first published German War Aims in the First World War in 1961. Sonderweg historiography (scholarship that explores the notion that Germany has followed a separate path to modernity) attempts to anchor the field with two historical assumptions: that an understanding of the greater German past necessitates an inherently negative diagnosis of German ills, and that this diagnosis is a product of and hinges on the emergence of National Socialism in Germany. But what if we excluded National Socialism from ...

Molded From Clay: The Portrayal Of Jews Through The Golem In Yudel Rosenberg’S The Golem And The Wondrous Deeds Of The Maharal Of Prague And Gustav Meyrink’S Der Golem, Reynolds Nelson Hahamovitch

College of William & Mary Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines and compares Yudel Rosenberg’s The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal (1909) and Gustav Meyrink’s Der Golem (1915). These texts brought monumental changes to the Golem legend and brought the creature for the first time into popular modern literature. This thesis pays particular attention to how Rosenberg and Meyrink bind the Golem legend to the portrayal of the Jew in contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish discourses. I conclude my discussion of these two novels by examining them in light of the Finis Ghetto program, an urban renewal program which almost completely destroyed Prague’s ...

Literarische Zensur Als Meinungsbildung: Zensur In Der Bundesrepublik Und Die Entwicklung Einer Neuen Wahrnehmung Der Ehemaligen Ddr, Lauren M. Davidson

Senior Theses and Projects

Germany has a long history of literary censorship. Following the Second World War and the division of Germany into the Federal Republic of Germany in the West and the German Democratic Republic in the East, both states simultaneously decried censorship in their constitutions and proceeded to unofficially censor literature. A vast amount of research and attention has focused on the censorship program of the East German Ministry for Culture. Little attention, however, has been given to censorship in West Germany, despite its critical role in the development of a new cultural identity and perception of the former East Germany. This ...

Reconsidering The Emergence Of The Gay Novel In English And German, James P. Wilper

Purdue University Press Books

In Reconsidering the Emergence of the Gay Novel in English and German, James P. Wilper examines a key moment in the development of the modern gay novel by analyzing four novels by German, British, and American writers. Wilper studies how the texts are influenced by and respond and react to four schools of thought regarding male homosexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first is legal codes criminalizing sex acts between men and the religious doctrine that informs them. The second is the ancient Greek erotic philosophy, in which a revival of interest took place in the ...

Kaschnitz, Enzensberger, And Sandig: The Ecopoetics Of Water Pollution, Charlotte Melin

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This ecocritical reading of Marie Luise Kaschnitz’s poetic cycle “Rückkehr nach Frankfurt” ‘Return to Frankfurt’ (1945/46), Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s epic poem Der Untergang der Titanic ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ (1978), and a 21^st-century poem by Ulrike Almut Sandig analyzes key shifts in poetic representations of water pollution. The essay explores underlying cultural and political attitudes about water that define literary depictions of its pollution. It argues that these texts register a conceptual turn away from aesthetic appreciation of water in terms of its culturally rich, purifying properties and toward scientific understanding that emphasizes the ...

Patrick O’Neill. Transforming Kafka: Translation Effects. Toronto: U Of Toronto P, 2014. 222 Pp., Robert Lemon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Patrick O’Neill. Transforming Kafka: Translation Effects. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2014. 222 pp.

Introduction, Necia Chronister, Lutz Koepnick

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The task of this special issue is to unearth the often denied logic of neoliberal rationality in Germany over the last few decades by exploring how various literary texts, films, and artistic projects, at the level of both content and formal experimentation, have sought to visualize the ramifications of deregulation and ceaseless self-management. The volume features scholarly work on various literary texts, performances, films, time-based art works, and theoretical interventions that explore the nexus between neoliberalism, new media culture, and the landscapes of temporal experience.

Sickness Unto Death In The Age Of 24/7: Wolfgang Herrndorf's Arbeit Und Struktur, Lilla Balint

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

How does one die in the digital age? In exploring this question, this article juxtaposes Jonathan Crary’s critique of the contemporary and Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Arbeit und Struktur—a blog in which the German author documented his three-year battle against brain cancer. The digital age, Crary argues in 24/7, not only enables but forces its natives to ceaselessly engage in work. From the vantage point of terminal illness, however, the digital administration of the self appears not as a strategy of disempowerment but as a life-sustaining practice that allows for the continuous production of the self under precarious ...

Corrupting Capitalism: Michael Ende’S Momo And “Cathedral Station”, Heike Polster

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Michael Ende, the well-known author of The Neverending Story, foresaw dramatic changes in the fabric of society resulting from a turn toward neoliberal policies. One such far-reaching and dangerous change has to do with a diminishing of temporal autonomy, the ability to freely determine the use and meaning of our time. This article explores how neoliberalism is shaping our concept of time and our experience of it. In an effort to demonstrate the process and the line of reasoning behind the monetization of time, and to connect time to more qualitative considerations of the human condition, I shall demonstrate how ...

Time’S Deadly Arrow: Time And Temporality In Narratives Of Immaterial Labor, Sabine Von Dirke

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The article investigates the discourse on time and temporality in non-fictional and fictional accounts of paid, white collar labor, or, in the broader terminology of Maurizio Lazzarato, immaterial labor since the last quarter of the twentieth century. More specifically, it brings the critique of neoliberal capitalism by two influential social philosophers, Richard Sennett and Oskar Negt, in dialogue with fictional narratives of white collar labor: Rainer Merkel’s novel, Das Jahr der Wunder (The Year of Miracles, 2001), W.E. Richartz’s Büroroman (Office Novel, 1976) and Wilhelm Genazino’s Abschaffel-trilogy (1977-1979). Sennett and Negt’s non-fictional accounts contrast ...

Eyes Wide Open: The Look Of Obstinacy, The Gaze Of The Camera, And The 24/7 Economy In Antja Ehmann And Harun Farocki’S Labour In A Single Shot (2011-2015), Richard Langston

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Moving beyond Jonathan Crary's ontologically framed subject in his essay 24/7, the following essay calls on Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge's political economy of labor power in order to query the persistence of obstinacy within the neoliberal economy of 24/7. Tested against Harun Farocki's final film project co-produced with his wife Antje Ehmann, "Labour in a Single Shot," the essay argues that neoliberalism has in fact generated both tools and forms of collective agency that together call Crary's cultural pessimism into question.