German Language and Literature Commons^™

Music And The Mind, Amanda K. Densmoor

Student Publications

How does music affect a work of literature? What does it reveal about the psychological state of the characters?

Edwin Fischer And Bach Performance Practice Of The Weimar Republic, Bradley V. Brookshire

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Edwin Fischer (1886-1960) provided a synthesis of approaches to Bach pianism that resolved dialectical tensions of long standing between schools that opposed one another throughout the nineteenth century. I argue that Fischer’s synthesis––which permits exegetical interpretation while maintaining a preservationist stance toward the integrity of the text––resembles both Felix Mendelssohn’s bifurcated approach to Bach’s music and Moses Mendelssohn’s description of a similar duality within modern Judaism. Such resemblance may not be coincidental or superficial, given that Fischer married into the Mendelssohn family at the height of its cultural influence in Weimar-Era Berlin. Although pieces of the Mendelssohnian construct were in …

Waking Dreams: Modernist Intoxications And The Poetics Of Altered States, Jason Ciaccio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Intoxication as a poetic principle is often identified with the romantic imagination. The literature of the intoxicated reverie is commonly thought of as synonymous with works such as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” DeQuincey’s accounts of numerous nightmares and reveries, a number of Keats’ odes, Novalis’ hymns, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s stories, and Poe’s oneiric Gothic tales. Each of these, in part through their opiation or the incorporation of various other draughts, evokes a realm of dreams and visions of various sorts that are commonly associated with romantic poetic practices. The ecstatic trance, the sense of passing into another domain that is …

America Abandoned: German-Jewish Visions Of American Poverty In Serialized Novels By Joseph Roth, Sholem Asch, And Michael Gold, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In 1930, Hungarian- born Jewish author Arthur Holitscher’s book Wiedersehn mit Amerika: Die Verwandlung der U.S.A. (Reunion with America: The Trans-formation of the U.S.A.) was reviewed by one J. Raphael in the German- Jewish Orthodox weekly newspaper, Der Israelit. This reviewer concluded: “Despite its good reputation, America is a strange country. And Holitscher, whose relationship to Judaism is not explicit, but direct, has determined that to be the case for American Jews as well.” The reviewer’s use of the word “strange” (komisch) offers powerful insight into the complex perceptions of America held by many …

"Part Of That Force That Always Wills The Evil And Always Produces The Good" On A Devilish Incoherence, Peter Baumann

Sophia and Philosophia

When Mephisto was asked by Faust, "Well now, who are you then?" (“Nun gut, wer bist Du denn?”), he gave the well-known answer, "Part of that force that always wills the evil and always produces the good" (“Ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft”: Goethe, Faust, 1334-1336). This answer raises some important questions which in turn lead to interesting answers. Let us start by looking at the content of Mephisto's utterance.

Neidhart: Selected Songs From The Riedegg Manuscript: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Mgf 1062, Kathryn Starkey, Edith Wenzel

TEAMS Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions

The medieval German poet called Neidhart is one of the most important poets of his time. Set in the village among peasant maidens and their boorish male counterparts, Neidhart's satirical songs stand in marked contrast to courtly love song and enrich our understanding of medieval literary culture. This book presents for the first time annotated English translations of a substantial collection of songs attributed to this prolific poet. Its source is the thirteenth-century Riedegg manuscript, the oldest extensive collection of songs attributed to Neidhart. This book presents a representative survey of the songs in order to make this material accessible …

Shame In The Nineteenth-Century Village Tale In The German-Speaking Context, 1843-1897, Angineh Djavadghazaryans

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the genre of the German village tale, the so-called Dorfgeschichte. Looking at village tales published between 1843 and 1897 by Berthold Auerbach, Gottfried Keller, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, and Clara Viebig, I investigate emotions of shame and examine reasons for the emergence of shameful feelings in village life and the ways in which these feelings are represented in village tales. Shame, as I will show, not only constitutes an important component of the Dorfgeschichte, but the genre itself offers a forum in which shame can be discussed. Research has shown that shame is not a modern category; I …

What Is Contemporary Art?, Irina A. Hinkel

Open Access Theses

The topic of the thesis is “What is contemporary art?”. While exploring contemporary art, its conceptions, characteristics and remarkable events related to it, I concentrate mainly on research of contemporary art as universal, particularly on such phenomena as multicultural art, postdramatic theater, audience interaction, as well as challenged aesthetics. This thesis also considers postmodern art, since contemporary art in its current form departed from postmodern art. I rely on and address the German language prose and drama, as well as visual arts. The work of Elfriede Jelinek, John von Düffel, Peter Handke, Kristof Magnusson, and multicultural artists Vladimir Kaminer, Feridun …

From Professor-Student To Collaborators, Jesse E. Siegel

Blogging the Library

I had not met Michael Ritterson before he visited the Conservation Lab at Special Collections, where he was having a book mended, but I had certainly heard of him. A former faculty member of the German department, Mr. Ritterson is now a German translator, taking on projects from translating the work of a 17th German woman’s study of butterflies to the poetry of a Berlin leftist written during the 1968 Movement. And, by previous contact in the mail, he had heard of me. So after Mary Wooton showed him the fully repaired book, we were formally introduced and had the …

Rev. Of Encrypting The Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel Of The First Generation By Kirstin Gwyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. X, 246 P. Isbn 9780198709930., William Grange

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Kirstin Gwyer re-investigates (and in some cases, re-discovers) works of fiction written in the aftermath of the Holocaust experience. Selected works by H. G. Adler (1910-1988), Jenny Rosenbaum Aloni (1917-1993), Elisabeth Augustin (1903-2001), Erich Fried (1921-1988), and Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1916-1991) constitute her primary focus. Critics at the time their works initially appeared found such narratives mostly incomprehensible; others branded them unethical, immoral, or worse. They were narrative attempts to “express the ineffable” (20), after all. It was better, some believed, to allow preterition to be the better part of disclosure. Author Kirstin Gwyer successfully debunks such biases, a process she …

Yiddish And Relation To The German Dialects, Bryan Witmore

Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to balance the complex, multi-component nature of Yiddish with its more homogenous speech community – Ashekenazic Jews –Yiddishists have proposed definitions for the Yiddish language that cannot be considered linguistic in nature. Instead, Yiddish is often seen as a cultural phenomenon. Closely related to the issue of what Yiddish is, is how Yiddish came about. This paper addresses these two issues by comparing Yiddish to German dialects in an attempt to demonstrate Yiddish’s linguistic proximity with German and also to approach a hypothesis for the origins of Yiddish.

Asian-European Cultural Mediation In The Works Of Galsan Tschinag, Richard Hacken

Faculty Publications

This paper, presented at an MLA International Symposium in Düsseldorf, Germany--"Other Europes: Migrations, Translations, Transformations"-- explores the sources of Galsan Tschinag's reception as a cultural mediator, based on post-colonial readings of his German-language writings and statements. Tschinag's status as shaman, healer and chief within his own people merges with the fact of his literary voice in German. While exoticism might explain part of his appeal, I show literary and philosophical elements that help to subvert stereotypes and promote cultural understanding.

Theatres Of Reality, Fiction, And Temporality: Vegard Vinge And Ida Müller’S Ibsen-Saga (2006 - 2015), Andrew L. Friedman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the influence of modernist aesthetics and ideologies on contemporary, European and U.S. experimental theatre. I argue that modernist and contemporary experimental theatres offer competing notions of reality, fiction, and temporality, which I interrogate through Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga. I illuminate this tension by reading current modes of performance against the Saga’s productions and work practices, as well as their aesthetic and ideological foundation in three modernist sources: the artificiality of Ibsen’s realism, the utopianism and totality of Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, and the temporal provocations of the historical avant-gardes. I contend that the …

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

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 and books that were …

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: …

On The Role Of Sublimation In The Works Of Gabriele Reuter, Maria Skene-Björkman

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis I discuss the relationship between Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati (love of fate) and Lacan’s understanding of sublimation through the lens of selected works by Gabriele Reuter. I argue that Reuter deploys an understanding of will power that draws on the Nietzschean concept of amor fati, which ultimately serves the function of sublimation as discussed by Lacan. In their respective efforts at establishing their own identities, the female protagonists in Reuter’s novels have to learn to overcome their sufferings, and in doing so they transform the process of identity formation into a life-affirming enterprise in the spirit …

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

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Imagination, Emotion, And Adolescent Socialization In German Literature From Romanticism To 1901, Brooke Shafar

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the representation of imagination, emotion, and adolescent socialization in German literature of the nineteenth century, in both canonical and popular texts, beginning with the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann in the early part of the century and ending with Thomas Manns Buddenbrooks in 1901. I examine my topic through a number of lenses. The dissertation is divided into two parts, each with two chapters. In the first part, I show how these representations of character imagination and emotion are variously tied to historical questions of adolescence and socialization that appear in the literature of the period. …

Berlin Transfer – The City On Roads And Rails, Mikael A. Olsson Berggren

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student 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 …