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A Branch Of Magic, Or The Possibility Of Myth In Esther Kinsky’S Am Fluß, Ben Pestell

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article demonstrates how literary walks can evoke myth in a meaningful way for contemporary life. In particular, through a close reading of Esther Kinsky’s Am Fluß [River], I argue that the landscape experienced on foot can articulate and give access to the transcendent component of myth. I begin with a survey of how magic and transcendent experience is configured in related literary forms (namely new nature writing, the post-secular, new materialism, and the literature of re-enchantment) but remains bound by material reality. I then define the meaning and function of myth in relation to contemporary literature. These …