Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Difficulty Of Saying "I": Translation And Censorship Of Christa Wolf's Der Geteilte Himmel, Katharina Von Ankum

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The end of the GDR in 1990 triggered a vivid literary debate in Germany which focused on the interrelationship of politics, literature, and criticism. In this context, the work of Christa Wolf was attacked as primary example of self-censorship and collaboration. In my article, I argue that Wolf became the target of literary criticism largely because of her attempt to express female subjectivity in her texts. In my contrastive analysis of Der geteilte Himmel (1963) and its English translation (1965), I read Wolf's text as an initial attempt at a "socialist modernism." The continued value of this and subsequent works …

Sounding Out The Silence Of Gregor Samsa: Kafka's Rhetoric Of Dys-Communication, Robert Weninger

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Through his transformation, Gregor Samsa, rather than simply silencing himself, allows his repressed voice to be heard palimpsestically in the language of his family and the boarders. His story is one of inverted—rather than aborted—communication. An analogous inversion governs the relationship between Kafka and his father and Kafka and his interpreters. As a child, Kafka could make little sense of his father's rules and his contradictory actions; later, he reduplicates in his writings this grammar of "dys-communication." Our puzzled and often frustrated reactions to Kafka's texts can therefore be seen to mirror his equally puzzled and frustrated reactions to his …

Reviews Of Recent Publications, Various Authors

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Granqvist, Raoul, editor. Canonization and Teaching of African Literature. Matatu 7 by Claire L. Dehon

Margolis, Joseph. Texts Without Referents: Reconciling Science and Narrative by David J. Depew

Keitel, Evelyne. Reading Psychosis, Readers, Texts and psychoanalysis by Reinhild Steingrover

Shaviro, Steven. Passion and excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory by Steven Ungar

Kellner, Douglas. Jean Baudrillard From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond by Allan Stoeld

Pecorora, Vincent P. Self & Form in Modern Narrative by Walter A. Strauss

Jordan, Barry. Writers and Politics in Franco's Spain by Salvador J. Fajardo

Motard-Noar, Martine. Les Fictions d'Hélène Cixous. Une autre lanque de …

Between Female Dialogics And Traces Of Essentialism: Gender And Warfare In Christa Wolf's Major Writings, Sabine Wilke

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The relationship between memory, writing, and the question of how we define ourselves as gendered subjects is at the center of Christa Wolf's work. Her literary production, starting in the late fifties with a rather naive and un-selfconscious love story, has undergone a dramatic shift. In her more recent texts, Wolf sets out to rewrite classical mythology to make us aware of those intersections in the history of Western civilization at which women were made economically and psychologically into objects. The present essay seeks to locate Christa Wolf's evolving conception of gender and warfare within the contemporary theoretical discussion on …

Reviews Of Recent Publications, Various Authors

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Sagan Gubar. Blindspots of an Old Dream of Equality: Liberal Feminism as Exclusionary Practice in No Man's Land