German Literature Commons^™

Larson Powell. The Technological Unconscious In German Modernist Literature: Nature In Rilke, Benn, Brecht, And Döblin. Rochester: Camden House, 2008. 256 Pp., Christa Spreizer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Larson Powell. The Technological Unconscious in German Modernist Literature: Nature in Rilke, Benn, Brecht, and Döblin. Rochester: Camden House, 2008. 256 pp.

Jakob Lothe, Beatrice Sandberg, And Ronald Speirs, Eds. Franz Kafka: Narration, Rhetoric, And Reading. Columbus: Ohio State Up, 2011. X + 251 Pp., Richard T. Gray

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Jakob Lothe, Beatrice Sandberg, and Ronald Speirs, eds. Franz Kafka: Narration, Rhetoric, and Reading. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2011. x + 251 pp.

Mapping The World, Culture, And Border-Crossing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb Library

Authors in the collected volume Mapping the World, Culture, and Border-crossing — edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and I-Chun Wang and published by National Sun Yat-sen University Press in 2010— begin with exploring theoretical premises about the processes and ramifications of cultural crossings to establish a clearly defined theoretical context for the case studies which follow. The case studies range from the creation of identity through patriotic songs in Taiwan under martial law, to nationality and Japanese identity, cultural autonomy in contemporary North America, Asian migration to Latin America, ethnic identity in the writings of Tan, Naipaul, Eliot, and …

Twenty-Eighth Annual Bibliography 2014 (Contemporary German Literature Collection), Brian Vetruba, Paul Michael Lützeler, Katharina Böhm

University Libraries Publications

The 28th bibliography for 560 volumes added to Washington University Libraries' Contemporary German Literature Collection. All published in 2014, these acquisitions include novels, poetry, short story collections, essays, autobiographical works, and literary and cultural periodicals mainly from publishers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A small number of items published in Italy and Luxembourg were also added. This Collection serves as the research arm for the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature's Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature. A bibliography of items added the previous year is compiled each year by Washington University's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in …

Land Of Fantasy, Land Of Fiction: Klara May's 'Mit Karl May Durch Amerika' (1931), Maureen Gallagher

Maureen O. Gallagher

No abstract provided.

The Kränzchen Library And The Creation Of Teenage Identity, Maureen Gallagher

Maureen O. Gallagher

No abstract provided.

Schwarz Auf Weiß: The History Of Race Representation And Revision In [German] Children’S Books, Maureen Gallagher

Maureen O. Gallagher

In this poster I will attempt to create a visual history of the representation and description of Black characters in select German children’s books in light of the recent controversy that erupted when the Thienemann Verlag announced their new edition of Otfried Preußler’s classic Die kleine Hexe would remove the word “Negerlein.” A full-scale public debate emerged in Germany with Stern, Spiegel, and other prominent publications weighing in to a debate that placed the white literary establishment against a host of Black German artists, activists, and citizens. Denis Scheck even appeared on his popular Druckfrisch program on ARD in Blackface …

Magic(Infra)Realism: Jetztzeiten Of Believability And Latin American History In García Márquez’S Cien Años De Soledad And Otoño Del Patriarca., Katarzyna Jasinski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the idea of Colombian history as ‘random coincidence’ in Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad and El otoño del patriarca. Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History and Michel Foucault’s Nietzsche, Genealogy, History provide the theoretical framework for the research. This thesis examines magic realism as a way of representing the true invisible past of Latin America. The combination of Foucault’s concept of genealogy, Walter Benjamin’s ‘messianic historical materialism’ and García Márquez’s ‘magic realism’ demonstrates that the combination of living and telling produce a Jetztzeit of believability that redeems Latin American history from historicism. …

Be A Man, Comrade! Construction Of The ‘Socialist Male Personality’ In The Gdr Youth Literature Of The 1950s And 1960s., Joanna Broda-Schunck

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the main goals of the East German government was the education of its population towards Socialism, and the creation of the new type of human – the Neue Mensch. The belief in the possibility of molding the next generation was particularly strong in the first decades of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), – in the 1950s and the 1960s. At the same time, the leaders of the regime presented the new Socialist state as the rightful heir to the German cultural and historical traditions. Both claims were aimed at strengthening the legitimacy of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED …

Repetitions, Scott Abbott, Zarko Radakovic

Scott Abbott

The two authors follow a character in Peter Handke's novel "Repetition" from Austria into Slovenia. Each writes about the experience from his own perspective.

Forms Of Identity: Stations Of The Cross In Peter Handke's "Die Linkshaendige Frau", Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

The Christian Stations of the Cross, as abstracted by Barnett Newman, structure this novel by Peter Handke, raising questions about the use of religious forms in a work of postmetaphysical literature.

Neue Jugend - Einleitung, Henning Wrage

German Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: This book discusses research on the culture of postwar Germany (1945–1962), a topic that has become increasingly complex in recent years. Virulent topics such as war, destruction, homecoming, flight, expulsion, guilt, daily life, religion, etc., are explored systematically, using examples and by focusing on fiction, nonfiction, and film in the two German states. Historians and scholars in the field of literature and film have contributed to this compendium. They address various core questions concerning aesthetic representation and the formation of contemporary history.

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

David Palumbo-Liu. The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age. by Paul Cahill

Natalie Edwards. Shifting Subjects. Plural Subjectivity in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Autobiography by Anna Rocca

Zsuzsu Baross. Posthumously: For Jacques Derrida by Stephen Barker

Natalie Edwards, Amy L. Hubbell, and Ann Miller, eds. Textual and Visual Selves by Rachel Gabara

Stephen M. Hart. Gabriel García Márquez by Regina Janes

Vivian Liska. When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature by Tyler Whitney

"Mich Beschäftigen Vor Allem Dinge, Die Sich In Meiner Umgebung Abspielen": Konstruktionen Des Privaten Und Des Öffentlichen In Der Literatur Der Brd Und Der Ddr, Christina E. Getaz

German and Russian Studies Honors Projects

Common knowledge assumes that capitalism and socialism structured life differently with regards to what was public and private. This paper critically investigates this notion, focusing not on property, but on the realm of ideas and personal experiences. With a basis in historical and theoretical notions of the public and private spheres as conceptualized by Hannah Arendt, I analyze critical works by Jurek Becker and Heinrich Böll written in the two German states in the 1970s. Focusing on the ways in which these works depict an entanglement of the public and the private, I show how the East- and West-German works …

Robert Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 1 In F-Sharp Minor, Op. 11–Style And Structure, Stephanie Abigail Emberley

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Robert Schumann's music reflects the complexity of his life and psyche. Even Schumann himself acknowledged the challenges this presented to anyone attempting to understand his music, and the Piano Sonata no. 1 in F-sharp minor, op. 11 is an example of the complex inter-relationship between Schumann's music and life. This document will have a three-fold approach to discussing Schumann's Sonata. I will outline the literary characteristics of German Romantic authors, discuss how Schumann musically interprets these characteristics while reflecting other composers, and show how these techniques help add extra-musical significance to op. 11, particularly in connection with Clara.

Robert Schumann's …

Nietzsche’S Zarathustra And Parodic Style: On Lucian’S Hyperanthropos And Nietzsche’S Übermensch, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

It is well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata’s hyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances by reflecting on the context of that origination from Lucian’s Kataplous – literally, “sailing into port” – referring to the soul’s journey (ferried by Charon, guided by Hermes) into the afterlife. The Kataplous he tyrannos, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant, is a Menippean satire of the “overman” who is imagined to be superior to others of “lesser” station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) …

Bibliography For Work In Digital Humanities And (Inter)Mediality Studies, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Hirsch, Sebald, And The Uses And Limits Of Postmemory, Kathy Behrendt

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Marianne Hirsch’s influential concept of postmemory articulates the ethical significance of representing trauma in art and literature. Postmemory, for Hirsch, “describes the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the experiences of their parents, experiences that they ‘remember’ only as the narratives and images with which they grew up, but that are so powerful, so monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right”. Through appeal to philosophical work on memory, the ethics of remembering, and Peter Goldie’s discussion of empathy, I explore the virtues and limitations of Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, and the risks involved …

Future Past: The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra And Eternity Or What Is The Weight Of The Greatest Heavy Weight?, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Remembering East German Childhood In Post-Wende Life Narratives, Juliana Mamou

Wayne State University Dissertations

REMEMBERING EAST GERMAN CHILDHOOD IN

POST-WENDE LIFE NARRATIVES

by JULIANA MAMOU, May 2013

This dissertation explores how East German childhood is remembered in four exemplary auto/biographical texts that appeared in the early years of the twenty-first century. In Jana Hensel's Zonenkinder, Claudia Rusch's Meine freie deutsche Jugend, Jana Simon's Denn wir sind anders, and Robert Ide's Geteilte Träume. The depiction of childhood memories is moreover contextualized in the radical social, political and economic changes after the Wende and their effects on former East Germans as individuals and as a group. Written by authors who constitute a generational cohort who were …