This study of the prose work of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898) focuses on the central role played by ambiguity. This narrative element is traced in both the fragments, rarely discussed in critical literature, and in the novellas. While situating Meyer's work in the context of the nineteenth century, this examination of narrative strategy provides an avenue of approach fruitful for both the non-specialist and the Meyer-scholar, revealing the unusual breadth of Meyer's prose.
Much as Nietzsche has gained in popularity during the last century, his poetry still has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. On closer scrutiny, his aposiopetic style, along with the labyrinthine and self-referential nature of his writings, subtly hint toward the recurring and parallel presence of poetry in his writings. This fact cannot be ignored, and his poetry should therefore be included in any reading of Nietzsche. This study investigates Nietzsche's poetic output while simultaneously regarding him as a poet-philosopher. This reading allows juxtaposing all Nietzschean key concepts while avoiding the temptation to simplify Nietzsche by centering his thought on any particular one. The author ends by highlighting a hitherto neglected term that allows a simultaneous reading of Nietzschean keywords while also including the essential notions of movement, flux, and play.
This work explores the intersection of the material and poetic economies in Soll und Haben and Der Nachsommer. It demonstrates how the main poetical strategies of the two novels, dichotomization (Soll und Haben) and total economization (Der Nachsommer), are defined by economic themes, structures, and forms. The «economopoetics» of the novels, i.e. the multitude of connections between economics and aesthetics, pervades the texts on three different levels: as content, as representational model, and as literary strategy. Although very different in their treatment of topics relating to business and economics, both novels are driven by narratives parsed with economic expression. The diverging patterns of economopoetics support central commentaries on their underlying realist aesthetics. One important finding is that, in spite of money's apparent absence from the core content of some literary texts, economic relations are inherent in the narrative structure of those texts. The book shows that economopoetics is relevant not only to any extant literature which attempts explicitly to thematize business and economics (such as Soll und Haben), but also to that which does not (such as Der Nachsommer). Economic organizing principles are pervasive signatures of the novel's aesthetic.
During the mid-nineteenth century, Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer pursued a fifty-year career as a playwright and theater manager in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at a time of the transformation of court theaters and itinerant troupes into commercial establishments staffed by middle-class professionals and subject to market forces. Although she has been undervalued by some critics past and present who considered her mainly as an adapter of contemporary novels, this study shows that with her thorough knowledge of the European dramatic tradition, her skill as a playwright, and above all her professionalism she overcame institutional and gender bias to develop a form of drama that integrated the social and economic changes of her time. The analysis focuses on her use of the subversive genre of comedy, the strategies she used to evade the censor, and her employment of assertive female and working-class characters. She revived commedia dell'arte techniques of the past while devising innovations that anticipated the subsequent course of drama as well as the film techniques of today.
As one of the most widely read German authors of the nineteenth century, Gustav Freytag (1816-1895) continues to be associated with the middle class and the progress it enjoyed. Yet while his best-selling novel Soll und Haben (1855) and its lesser-known successor Die verlorene Handschrift (1864) owed their vast commercial success largely to their buoyant message of bourgeois advancement, they simultaneously devote significant attention to elements of traditional German society. In exploring Freytag's dual roles as both a novelist of contemporary middle-class life and a cultural historian, this book uncovers the author's divergent - and ostensibly conflicting - desire both to embrace progress and commemorate the past. Investigating his literary engagement with three central elements of Germany's historical identity - the pervasiveness of folk beliefs, a strong identification with rural life, and the continued presence of the aristocracy - this study shows how Freytag attempts to locate these constituents of pre-industrial Germany in a modern, industrial nation, and in doing so contributes to a historically anchored national identity in which material and political progress coexist with a rich heritage and ancient traditions.
This book examines the possibilities of political theorizing in the writings of early nineteenth-century German women and develops a new theory of reading women's domestic fiction. Drawing on feminism, new historicism, and hermeneutics for its theoretical framework, the study suggests significant changes to Jürgen Habermas's concept of the public sphere and women's role within it. The book re-evaluates the genre of domestic fiction and traces its use by women writers for political symbolism. Through novels, educational treatises, conduct manuals, poetry, and history books for women and children Caroline Fouqué, the principal voice in this study, and other authors of the period participated in the key debates of the early nineteenth century, among them the anguished discussions about the crisis in masculinity after the defeat of the Prussian army in 1806, the discourses of national identity, the construction of a national past, and the reorganization of the feudal state.
Covers writers from the ancient Greeks to 20th-century authors. Includes biographical-bibliographical entries on nearly 500 writers and approximately 550 entries focusing on significant works of world literature. Each author entry provides a detailed overview of the writer's life and works. Work entries cover a particular piece of world literature in detail.
Downing s highly original, thorough, and rewarding book is certain to emerge as an indispensable critical reference-point for scholars and students in the areas of narrative theory, problems of realism, and 19th-century German prose. . . . A nearly ideal combination of intellectual scope, erudition, and originality. Thomas Pfau, Duke University To write an engaging and entertaining study of German or poetic realism that offers insightful and differentiated readings of the novellas of Stifter, Storm, Keller, C.F. Meyer, and Raabe through the lenses focused on repetition of narratology, Critical Theory, and psychoanalysis and, to a leser extent gender studies, is without a doubt a daunting endeavor. This study, with its keen analysis of the doubling within German realist texts, is equal to the task. . . . While this book is written to engage and challenge scholars of realism, the clarity of Downing s prose makes the textual twists and turns, and thus the study as a whole, equally accessible to non-specialists. German Studies Review"
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Wien, 2002. North American Studies in 19th-Century German Literature. Vol. 32 General Editor: Jeffrey L. Sammons During the month of October 1816, San Francisco received a visit from the Russian brig Rurik, only the third non-Spanish vessel to call at what was then a small colonial garrison and mission town on the extreme edge of Spanish North America. In this book the author provides English translations of reports of the visit (originally in German and French) by the ship's captain Otto von Kotzebue, naturalist Adelbert von Chamisso, and on-board artist Louis Choris. Eleven illustrations by Choris are also reproduced, including celebrated scenes and portraits of California mission Indians. Edward Mornin provides biographical sketches of the three reporters, a historical account of Rurik's round-the-world voyage, and a critical discussion of the observations of Kotzebue, Chamisso, and Choris, with their ideological and cultural determinants, especially with regard to the Indians under the control of the Spanish missionaries. The book shows how the narrative accounts of Kotzebue, Chamisso, and Choris, together with Choris's graphic record, continue to fascinate not only for their engaging portrayal of San Francisco's early inhabitants and the circumstances of their lives, but as shadow portraits of the reporters themselves and of the European cultures that produced them. Contents: Visit of Russian ship Rurik to San Francisco in 1816 - Translated reports of captain (Otto von Kotzebue), naturalist (Adelbert von Chamisso), and on-board artist (Louis Choris) - Reproductions of illustrations by Choris - Account of Rurik'sround-the-world voyage - Biographical sketches of Kotzebue, Chamisso, and Choris - Discussion of their views on Spanish colonial garrison and mission, mission Indians, soldiers and missionaries - Postcolonial assessment of reports and reporters.
