Bithell Series of Dissertations
This study examines how the literary works of Elisabeth Reichart, Charlotte Roche and Elfriede Jelinek challenge normativity both in their engagement with gender and sexuality and with aesthetic choices. The comparative analysis of texts published over a twenty-year period provides insights into the socio-political and cultural dynamics at the time of publication. It reveals the continuing relevance of feminist authorial voices to the present day, challenging the stable, normative understanding of feminism and feminist writing itself, and showing how literature can function as a form of intervention that provides a reflective space for readers to question norms in their own lives and to take the initiative to change these...
How has classical literature shaped culture, knowledge, the thinkable? What happens when a canonical text is translated from his gaze into her, and their, gaze(s)? These are some of the questions Barbara Köhler pursues in her modern epic poem, Niemands Frau (2007), her response to The Odyssey. Translated and re-imagined over the centuries, Homer’s tale found critical resonance in intellectual traditions from Christianity through to Post-Colonialism. Odysseus has been viewed as an ideal, reputedly using reason rather than force to dominate, but in Niemands Frau Köhler takes inspiration from Penelope to weave a text that challenges the rationalist and patriarchal...
German hip-hop culture is best known for its rap music and rappers’ portrayal of their life in Germany’s urban centres. Not many studies have looked at German hip-hop’s other main art forms, such as graffiti art, dance and music, in conjunction with rap, or considered their joint contribution to the creation and development of German popular culture and contemporary identity. This book breaks new ground by offering a comparative analysis of rappers, DJs, dancers, graffiti artists and their practices in the German cities of Hamburg and Oldenburg. In so doing, it reveals a variety of individual narratives on what it means to be German and to understand how...
Society and its Outsiders in the Novels of Jakob Wassermann takes a fresh look at Wassermann’s depiction of society and its mechanisms of exclusion, specifically those affecting the Jew, the woman, the child and the homosexual man. Wassermann’s extensive oeuvre has not, until now, been considered as an attempt to portray German society at different historical stages, from the Biedermeier to the end of the Weimar Republic. At the same time, this analysis shows how Wassermann’s interest in outsider figures is intertwined with an interest in narrative technique and discusses how his perception of the world affects his depiction of character.
This book investigates a specific aspect of travel literature – the fictional travel novel – and one practitioner of that sub-genre – the contemporary German author Michael Roes (b. 1960). The analysis focuses on two main areas of research. The first concerns Roes’s representation of intercultural encounters: how does Roes conceive and present an encounter between representatives of different cultures? And what constitutes a successful encounter, if such a thing exists? The second area of interest in this study concerns Roes’s intertextual methodology. This study identifies those intertextual references that are of greatest significance and examines how and why Roes refers to other writers and their texts as he composes his...
Ghosts have
made an unexpected reappearance in post-unification German literature.
Catherine Smale reads this as symptomatic of writers’ attempts to renegotiate their
personal and collective identity following the loss of the former East German
state. Focusing on the recent work of Christa Wolf and Irina Liebmann, Smale
outlines the ways in which these writers adopt notions of haunting in their
engagement with the double legacy of National Socialism and the GDR.
The ghost has
long been regarded as a vehicle for making manifest taboo or unauthorized
memories. However, Smale goes further, demonstrating how the human subject is
destabilized by the return of the phantom and is itself rendered insecure and
spectral. Drawing on...
Nineteenth-century Germany witnessed many debates on the nature of the nation, both before and after unification in 1871. Bourgeois authors engaged closely with questions of class and national identity, and resourcefully sought to influence the collective destiny of the German people through works of popular fiction and cultural history. Typical of this trend was the realist writer Gustav Freytag (1816-1895), the most widely read novelist of his era. Innovatively exploring all of Freytag’s works (poetry, drama, novels, history, journalism, biography and literary theory), Schofield examines how his popular writing systematically re-imagined the social structures of German society, embedding political agendas within contemporary...
The novels of Theodor Fontane (1819-1898), Germany's most important Realist, have long been appreciated for the symbolism of their represented worlds. In this study, Michael White examines the significance of space and spatial experience across Fontane’s oeuvre, providing analyses of non-fiction prose and less well-known novels, alongside major works and poetry. The study reveals not only a complex and varied spatial symbolism, but also that space itself is a thematic concern in Fontane’s writing. His texts portray human beings’ relationships with their worlds, and how and to what end they invest their environment with meaning. Fontane's novels and travel writings emerge as profoundly reflexive discourses on art and its...