New Critical Perspectives on Martin Walser

New Critical Perspectives on Martin Walser PDF Author: Frank Pilipp
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9781879751675
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Critical essays on contemporary German novelist. Martin Walser (born 1927) is one of the most prolific contemporary German novelists, and one with a place in world literature. His work provides an astute critical commentary in novelistic form on postwar Germany. The present volume comprises essays by eleven Walser experts on various aspects of his writings, with concentration on the novels of the last 15 years, books such as Runaway Horse (1978), The Inner Man (1979), The Swan Villa(1980), Letter to Lord Liszt (1982), and In Defense of Childhood (1991). Parallels and influences discussed in these studies include Schiller, Richardson, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Updike, Brecht, and Walter Kempowski.

New Critical Perspectives on Martin Walser

New Critical Perspectives on Martin Walser PDF Author: Frank Pilipp
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9781879751675
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Critical essays on contemporary German novelist. Martin Walser (born 1927) is one of the most prolific contemporary German novelists, and one with a place in world literature. His work provides an astute critical commentary in novelistic form on postwar Germany. The present volume comprises essays by eleven Walser experts on various aspects of his writings, with concentration on the novels of the last 15 years, books such as Runaway Horse (1978), The Inner Man (1979), The Swan Villa(1980), Letter to Lord Liszt (1982), and In Defense of Childhood (1991). Parallels and influences discussed in these studies include Schiller, Richardson, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Updike, Brecht, and Walter Kempowski.

Aging and Old-Age Style in Günter Grass, Ruth Klüger, Christa Wolf, and Martin Walser

Aging and Old-Age Style in Günter Grass, Ruth Klüger, Christa Wolf, and Martin Walser PDF Author: Stuart Taberner
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571135782
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Explores the performance of aging in the "late style" of Günter Grass, Ruth Klüger, Christa Wolf, and Martin Walser. Demographers say that by the year 2060, every seventh person in Germany will be aged eighty or older, and every third person over sixty-five. The prediction for other Western countries is scarcely different. Indeed, the aging society is seen by some as a graver threat than even global warming, with potentially unmanageable tensions relating to intergenerational relationships, work and benefits, and flows of people. This book explores the representation and performance of aging in recent "late-style" German-language fiction. It situates the authors chosen as case studies -- Günter Grass, Ruth Klüger, Christa Wolf, and Martin Walser -- in their biographical and social contexts and explores the significance of their aesthetic figuring of aging for debates raging both in Germany and internationally. In particular, the book looks at gender, generations, and trauma and their impact on how writers "narrativize" aging. Finally, it examines the "timeliness" of these different representations and late-style performances of aging in the context of the shift of social, political, and economic power away from the declining societies of theWest to the ascendant societies of the East. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society at the University of Leeds.

Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature

Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature PDF Author: William Grange
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810863146
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Some authors strongly criticized attempts to rebuild a German literary culture in the aftermath of World War II, while others actively committed themselves to 'dealing with the German past.' There are writers in Austria and Switzerland that find other contradictions of contemporary life troubling, while some find them funny or even worth celebrating. German postwar literature has, in the minds of some observers, developed a kind of split personality. In view of the traumatic monstrosities of the previous century that development may seem logical to some. The Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature is devoted to modern literature produced in the German language, whether from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or writers using German in other countries. This volume covers an extensive period of time, beginning in 1945 at what was called 'zero hour' for German literature and proceeds into the 21st century, concluding in 2008. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on writers, such as Nobel Prize-winners Heinrich Bsll, GYnter Grass, Elias Canetti, Elfriede Jelinek, and W. G. Sebald. There are also entries on individual works, genres, movements, literary styles, and forms.

Ambivalent Literary Farewells to the German Democratic Republic

Ambivalent Literary Farewells to the German Democratic Republic PDF Author: John David Pizer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311072510X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This study reverses the question implicit in title of Christa Wolf’s now-canonical 1990 novella Was bleibt (What remains), looking instead at what was lost during the process of German reunification. It argues that, in their work during and after the Wende, most literary authors from both East and West Germany responded ambivalently to the reunification. Many felt, on the one hand, a keen sense of loss as the GDR dissolved and an expanded Federal Republic summarily absorbed former Eastern Germany. They mourned the ideals of democratic socialism, tolerance, and internationalism that the GDR had held dear, as well as the country’s rich cultural life. On the other hand, however, they recognized that the GDR was a fundamentally corrupt surveillance state whose industry weighed heavily on the environment while failing to buoy the country’s economy. By looking at works by some of the most important authors from either side of the border, this study shows that those who unequivocally embraced the reunification were clearly in the minority.

The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel

The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel PDF Author: Graham Bartram
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521483926
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel, first published in 2004, provides a broad ranging introduction to the major trends in the development of the German novel from the 1890s to the present. Written by an international team of experts, it encompasses both modernist and realist traditions, and also includes a look back to the roots of the modern novel in the Bildungsroman of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The structure is broadly chronological, but thematically-focused chapters examine topics such as gender anxiety, images of the city, war, and women's writing; within each chapter, key works are selected for close attention. Unique in its combination of breadth of coverage and detailed analysis of individual works, and featuring a chronology and guides to further reading, this Companion will be indispensable to students and teachers.

The Burden of the Past

The Burden of the Past PDF Author: Thomas A. Kovach
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571133687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
English translation, analysis, and contextualization of Walser's notorious but little-examined Peace-Prize speech and related writings. The German novelist Martin Walser's 1998 speech upon accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade remains a milestone in recent German efforts to come to terms with the Nazi past. The day after the speech, Ignatz Bubis, leader of Germany's Jewish community, attacked Walser for inciting dangerous right-wing sentiment with controversial passages including the notorious statement "Auschwitz is not suited to be a moral bludgeon," thus igniting the protracted public battle of opinions known as the "Walser-Bubis Debate." The speech continues to loom large in Germany's struggle to acknowledge responsibility for Nazi crimes yet escape a suffocating burden of remembrance. But in spiteof its notoriety, little attention has been paid to what the speech actually says, as opposed to the public outcry and debate that followed it. This book presents the text of the speech, along with several of Walser's other essays and speeches about the Holocaust and its impact on German identity, in English translation. It examines them as texts, a process that involves a discussion of literary complexities and an attempt to distinguish valid criticism of German intellectual life from what is justifiably problematic. And it places this textual examination in the context of Walser's and other postwar German intellectuals' attempts to deal with the Nazi past, of German-Jewish relations in the postwar era, and of the once hidden and now -- due in part to Walser's speech -- increasingly open discourse about Germans as victims during and immediately after the Nazi era. Thomas A. Kovach is Professorof German Studies at the University of Arizona.

German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past

German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past PDF Author: Helmut Schmitz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351933825
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volumes spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Günter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

Seelenarbeit an Deutschland

Seelenarbeit an Deutschland PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333789
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
The last decade has undoubtedly been the most controversial in the long literary career of Martin Walser. This volume presents a review of this career, going far beyond short-lived arguments to present an insightful overview of much of his work. It considers not only major aspects of his writing, covering both his literary beginnings and the most recent works, but also different, previously neglected features of his persona and his writing, namely his activity as a university teacher and his art criticism. In addition, fruitful comparisons are made with other writers, such as Proust, Grass and Uwe Johnson. At the same time, recent controversies are also considered with major attention being paid to Walser’s public speeches and those works of fiction which have been seen by some as demanding the end of German self-recriminations over the Nazi past. This volume is unique in that much space is devoted to both sides of the argument. It will provide stimulating reading to all those interested in Germany and German literature.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture

Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture PDF Author: John Sandford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136816100
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1258

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Book Description
With more than 1,100 entries written by an international group of over 150 contributors, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture brings together myriad strands of social, political and cultural life in the post-1945 German-speaking world. With a unique structure and format, an inclusive treatment of the concept of culture, and coverage of East, West and post-unification Germany, as well as Austria and Switzerland, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture is the first reference work of its kind. Containing longer overviews of up to 2,000 words, as well as shorter factual entries, cross-referencing to other relevant articles, useful further reading suggestions and extensive indexing, this highly useable volume provides the scholar, teacher, student or non-specialist with an astonishing breadth and depth of information.

The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel

The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel PDF Author: Michael Sollars
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438108362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 957

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Book Description