German Literature Commons^™

The Desire Of Strict Souls: The Poetry, Criticism, And Letters Of Paul Valéry And Wallace Stevens, Michael Healy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation compares the poetic, critical, and epistolary oeuvres of Paul Valéry and Wallace Stevens and the influence of the former on the latter. Valéry famously advocated for the pursuit of “poésie pure” (“pure poetry”) and influenced Stevens especially in this way, though both of them concluded it was not achievable. I establish an approximation of a critical framework based on the work of the following critics and scholars: Wendy Lesser, Wendy Steiner, Anthony Cuda, Michael Clune, Paul Bové, and Liesl Olson. Harold Bloom’s passionate advocacy and deep, sustained engagement with Stevens and his work strongly influenced my choice to …

Thomas Mann’S Unbound Bodies: A Formal Analysis Of Disease In The Magic Mountain, Julia Shi

Student Theses and Dissertations

My senior thesis argues that disease is a formal element in Thomas Mann’s novel, The Magic Mountain, through the lens of a newly theorized genre: the “Bindungsroman” (“binding-novel”). The scholar Jonas Rosenbrück proposed the Bindungsroman as the successor genre to the Bildungsroman after the latter fell out of public favor after World War I.  Whereas the Bildungsroman narrates its hero’s maturation as a process of integration into society, the Bindungsroman’s hero is ontologically unstable and does not achieve normative resolution. This paper examines The Magic Mountain’s protagonist’s development as defined by the doubled play of binding and …

From “Total Destruction” To “Total Dictatorship”: The Influence Of Ernst Jünger’S Visionary Fascism, Nick Schiff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to answer one central question: How can the life and work of Ernst Jünger help illuminate the development of fascist ideas, culture, politics, and power across Europe from 1920-1945? The components of that question are: what were the core elements of Jünger’s aesthetics, morality, and politics? How did he synthesize these elements to create his influential vision of German fascism? What were Jünger’s interactions and exchanges with other European fascists, as well as influential Nazis including Carl Schmitt, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolph Hitler himself? How did Jünger’s new Fascist politics and aesthetics affect them? I argue that …

When Critics Are Artists: Ekphrasis In Erotic Art Criticism, Joanna A. Ligon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues for an erotics of art in art criticism in place of hermeneutics. In this thesis, I examine erotics of art, a focus on form and experiencing art instead of exclusively on content, in practice. Drawing on other essays by Sontag, specifically the essay “Godard” in comparison with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s own filmic criticism in Breathless, criticism according to an erotics of art becomes a new artwork itself. Subsequently, I present a definition of erotic through Anne Carson and Roland Barthes and juxtapose the term with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The comparison ultimately undoes …

Wordflight, Joey Gonnella

Theses and Dissertations

Exploring subjects revolving around the nature of images, language and their subsequent disseminationn through time, this paper weaves together seemingly unrelated topics from the hot air balloons of the Franco-Prussian war to the envelope poems of Emily Dickinson.

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

At Noon: (Post)Nihilistic Temporalities In The Age Of Machine-Learning Algorithms That Speak, Talha Issevenler

Publications and Research

This article recapitulates and develops the attempts in the Nietzschean traditions to address and overcome the proliferation of nihilism that Nietzsche predicted to unfold in the next 200 years (WP 2). Nietzsche approached nihilism not merely as a psychology but as a labyrinthic and pervasive historical process whereby the highest values of culture and founding assumptions of philosophical thought prevented the further flourishing of life. Therefore, he thought nihilism had to be encountered and experienced on many, often opposing, fronts to be fully consumed and left behind. Thus, just as Nietzsche captured the subtle reinventions of nihilism in new forms …

The Avenging Women: Grendel’S Mother, Signy, And Kriemhild, Kayla J. Baur

Publications and Research

The three respective texts, the Old English poem Beowulf, the Old Norse The Saga of the Volsungs, and the Middle High German text Nibelungenlied, feature female characters who fulfill the avenging woman archetype. In each of the three works, the female character uses unfeminine strength or cunning to exact vengeance for being wronged. In Beowulf, the avenging woman takes the form of Grendel’s mother, whose descriptions of monstrosity are owed to her acts of bloodshed to avenge the death of her son. In The Saga of the Volsungs, the vengeful plot enacted by Signy reveals her unusual display of cunning …

An Event-Without-Witness: A Nietzschean Theory Of The Digital Will To Power As The Will To Temporalize, Talha Issevenler

Publications and Research

This article offers a Nietzschean theory of digital will to power to conceptualize the temporality of social media feeds run by algorithms. Stylistic and methodological temporalities of Nietzsche are discussed as well as their influence in subsequent social theory of political technologies. The paradox of heavy investment in both subjective expression and nonhuman temporalization in social media milieus is addressed with the concept of an event-without-witness drawn from Nietzsche’s account of himself as the solitary thinker of catastrophe of nihilism and psychoanalytical and deconstructive literatures on the catastrophes of the 20th century. Nietzsche’s fundamental resistance to and fascination with the …

A Bird’S Eye View: Large-Scale Tonal Structures In Robert Schumann’S Four Song Cycles (Op. 42, 24, 39, And 48), Peter Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Some of Robert Schumann’s most notable works are his Lieder for solo voice and piano accompaniment. Schumann's Lieder are considered some of the best compositions in this genre, engendering various interpretations by performers and exciting vigorous debate among musicologists and theorists. Robert Schumann’s early music was almost entirely composed for the piano alone; it wasn’t until 1840 that he started to compose almost exclusively Lieder and song cycles inspired by his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert. This was a prolific year for Schumann compositionally, in part due to his marriage to Clara Schumann who was one of Europe’s most preeminent piano …

Critical Climates: Stimmung, Voice And Mythopoesis In German Literature From 1950–1989, Marc Cesar Rickenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Critical Climates examines the interest in myth among a number of literary figures from 1950 to 1989 in relation to the concurrent re-emergence of the German aesthetic concept of Stimmung. At once referring to atmosphere, milieu, mood, disposition and harmony, while carrying along its root Stimme, or voice, this dissertation shows how Stimmung informed a literary practice among German-language authors that engaged the relationship between narrative, ideology and collective moods in a way that can be spoken of in terms of a mythopoesis. This project builds upon contemporary scholarship that focuses on Stimmung as a way to refigure …

Unlearning Don Carlos: Historical And Fictional Elements Of Innovation In César Vichard De Saint-Réal’S 'Dom Carlos, Nouvelle Historique,' Friedrich Schiller’S 'Don Karlos, Infant Von Spanien,' And Giuseppe Verdi’S 'Don Carlos', Maria-Cristina Necula

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The story of the sixteenth-century Spanish prince, Don Carlos, has inspired numerous literary and musical adaptations that, despite the artistic limitations of historically-based content, reflect an astonishing scope of creative freedom. The myth created around Don Carlos originated in European consciousness as early as 1568. Various theories recorded in political reports and in historical works insinuated that the prince had been murdered while incarcerated by orders of his father, King Philip II. Simultaneously, hatred of Spain, intensified by Philip’s violent suppression of the revolt in the Netherlands, determined exiled Flemish nobles to launch an anti-Philip propaganda. The mystery of Don …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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; …