German Language and Literature Commons^™

“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 …

English Translation Of Rilke's Poem "Ich Fürchte Mich So Vor Der Menschen Wort", Daniel S. Shabasson

Graduate Student Publications and Research

My German-to-English translation of the poem "Ich fürchte mich so vor der Menschen Wort" by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Kafka's German-Jewish Reception As Mirror Of Modernity, Abraham Ariel Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the diverse and contradictory ways German-Jewish intellectuals identify what they commonly refer to as Kafka's "Jewish essence." Focusing on the commentaries of Margarete Susman, Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Gershom Scholem, and Max Brod, I claim that Kafka's German-Jewish reception reflects a broader historical dilemma that grew out of the Jewish encounter with modernity: Are Judaism and Jewishness best defined through religious, cultural, national, or ethnic categories? It is precisely this ambiguity that forms the historical backdrop to Kafka's Jewish interpretations. Situating the early phases of Kafka's posthumous reception within the broader context of interwar German-Jewish culture, my dissertation examines …

The Mirror Of Laughter: Mediation, Self-Reflection, And Healing In E.T.A. Hoffmann's Princess Brambilla, Alexander M. Schlutz

Publications and Research

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s capriccio Princess Brambilla explores a narrative realm of liminality and metamorphosis that reveals the fundamental instability of our most basic epistemological distinctions. Set during the irreverent days of the Roman carnival, Brambilla delights in a disorienting chaos of masks, costumes, dream images and hallucinations as Hoffmann pulls all the stops in a fantastical narrative of extraordinary complexity. The text unfolds a carnivalesque universe that – in the spirit of Early German Romantic irony – plays with the inescapable mediatory “distortions” brought about by the structures of human consciousness itself. Just as the carnival is a ritual of life-affirming …

E.T.A. Hoffmann's Marketplace Vision Of Berlin, Alexander M. Schlutz

Publications and Research

This essay discusses E.T.A. Hoffmann’s late novella My Cousin’s Corner Window. On the one hand, Hoffmann’s text offers a narratological experiment on how to best represent the experience of seeing the modern city, and combines to that end Enlightenment, Romantic, and Modern aesthetics. On the other hand, the text paints a portrait of the people of post-Napoleonic Berlin at a time of intense state surveillance. Hoffmann defies such state control by means of an ironic meta-narrative perspective that remains invisible to the watchful eye of the censor.

Beyond Observation: Literature And Science In Kafka, Rilke, Mann And Musil, Katya Ilina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The relationship between science and literature is an expanding area of scholarly interest which remains underrepresented within the field of Germanistik. This dissertation will attempt to close the gap by focusing on the interactions between the selected works of Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil, and the scientific outlooks which began to emerge in the nineteenth century primarily by focusing on the concept of observation. Observation is a concept important for the period of my investigation because it signified a major shift in consciousness. The prior facile division into impartial experimenter and observed phenomenon, so characteristic …

"Zum Einsatz Des Leben Fuer Deutschland": Girls' Popular Fiction During The Third Reich, Kathryn L. Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent research in the field of Cultural Studies has shown that popular fiction, more than any other genre, provides a way for readers to regulate and structure their lives. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the popular fiction which girls living in Nazi Germany read in an attempt to see how current events and policies are reflected in the novels in an effort to acclimatize girls to life under National Socialism and gain their complete support of the Third Reich. Popular fiction was expected to portray a mirror of life for young readers under National Socialism, with …

Logos, Eros Y Poiésis: Una Interpretación Sobre El Poema Quejas De Menón Por Diótima De Friedrich Hölderlin, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Resumen

La poesía designa fundamentalmente inspiración e inventiva artística. Como el mismo nombre indica, poesía es creación y producción: poiésis en sentido estricto. Si toda poesía es Poiésis da por presupuesto el lenguaje o Logos que se manifiesta en el poema. Y dado que el poema, para los románticos, es en sí mismo devenir, trasformación permanente y nunca acabada, en el poema se puede advertir la presencia de Eros si se concibe como tendencia, aspiración continua y movimiento anhelante.

Partiendo de una interpretación propia, la poesía del romántico alemán Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) muestra la reunión y convivencia de Logos, Eros …

Autonomy And Subjugation: The Dynamics Of Emancipation And Race In The Writings Of Precolonial German Women Authors, Traci S. O'Brien

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a study of certain contradictions in texts written by three authors of the nineteenth century, Ida von Hahn-Hahn (1805-1880), Fanny Lewald (1811-1889) and Ottilie Assing (1819-1884). The seeming discrepancy between the general enlightenment principles of their work and their position vis-a-vis the racial Other is at the center of my exploration. My position in this dissertation is that it is not possible to discuss their emancipatory ideas separate from their racializing metaphors. In fact, such metaphors are vital to their articulation of progress and emancipation. The discursive context of precolonial Germany can in part explain the relationship …

The Violence Of Merging: Unica Zürn 'S Writing (On) The Body, Caroline Rupprecht

Publications and Research

This article is about the work of German Surrealist Unica Zürn (1916-1970), known for her autobiographical text about madness, Der Mann im Jasmin: Eindrücke einer Geisteskrankheit (1977). The problem with Zürn's text, as this article demonstrates, is that it becomes nearly impossible to be distinguished from the author's life. Unlike conventional autobiographies, this text raises doubt oyer the sanity of the author who was not only diagnosed with schizophrenia but also made madness the subject of her writing. Zürn's companion, the artist Hans Bellmer, accused her of indulging in madness for the sake of being able to write about it; …

The Role Of Political And Sexual Identity In The Works Of Klaus Mann, James R. Keller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This critical study of Klaus Mann attempts to determine the role of sexual and political identity in his works. By examining such recurrent thematic patterns as the work of art as progeny, supernatural births, the image of the writer as soldier and monk, or obsession with death, among others, the study finds in Klaus Mann a characteristic sense of "social self-identity." The study considers Mann's fiction and non-fiction prose, drama, and diaries to show the interrelationship between his political development as an anti-fascist and his sexual identity as a gay writer.

The theoretical approach to Mann's works contrasts earlier twentieth-century …

From Idyll To Exile: The Transformed Self In The Early Works Of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Elizabeth Powers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines works of Goethe's pre-Weimar period and his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, which reconstructs that early period as the emergence of poet and oeuvre in terms of the abandonment of the idyll. It disputes the traditional view of Goethe as the poet of experience ("Erlebnis"). It seeks instead to demonstrate that Goethe wrote in the manner of his poetic forebears–by the imitation of literary models–and that "experience" was created in his work by emptying these models of their communal content. Once liberated from traditional literary forms, the new subjective lyric voice was literally homeless and its encounters with …