Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Viennese Memories Of History And Horrors , Dagmar C. G. Lorenz

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

World cities, including Vienna, are notorious for their crime history and for the imaginary crimes in fiction and film associated with them. The works of authors such as Musil, Canetti, Doderer, Jelinek, and Rabinovici, and Reed's film The Third Man portray Vienna as a setting of crimes.

"Conventional" crimes in literature and films include serial murders, crimes of passion, as well as underworld and gangster activities. These crimes pale in comparison with the crimes committed during the Nazi era and covered up thereafter. Aichinger in "Strassen und Plätze" calls to mind atrocities that occurred at different locations in Vienna. Only …

Staging Memory: The Drama Inside The Language Of Elfriede Jelinek, Gita Honegger

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay focuses on Jelinek's problematic relationship to her native Austria, as it is reflected in some of her most recent plays: Ein Sportstück (A Piece About Sports), In den Alpen (In the Alps) and Das Werk (The Plant). Taking her acceptance speech for the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature as a starting point, my essay explores Jelinek's unique approach to her native language, which carries both the burden of historic guilt and the challenge of a distinguished, if tortured literary legacy. Furthermore, I examine the performative force of her language. Jelinek's "Dramas" do not unfold in action and dialogue, …