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This is Camden House’s general German studies series, in which numerous titles have appeared since the early 1980s. It welcomes a broad range of topics and approaches - from traditional, narrowly literary studies on one hand to forays into cultural studies and cultural history on the other, from approaches based on traditional close reading to those emphasizing theory, from feminist to postmodern to multicultural. All periods of German culture and literature are fair game, from medieval Spielmannsepen to currently emerging writers of the twenty-first century.

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253 results in Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Page 10 of 13

Bertolt Brecht's 'Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches'
  • A German Exile Drama in the Struggle against Fascism
  • John J. White, Ann White
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    30 June 2010
  • Brecht's 'Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches' (Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) gives a compelling documentary picture of life in Nazi Germany. Close readings of individual scenes are accompanied by a detailed analysis of their role within the play's overall structure. Contrary to the assumption that it is a work of Aristotelian realism, Brecht is shown to employ covert alienation devices that are an integral part of his literary campaign against Third Reich Germany. This first study in English on the subject of Brecht and fascism offers a corrective to the overconcentration on the play's artistic aspects. It considers Brecht's relationship to the Popular Front's campaign against the National Socialist regime. Attention is paid to the play's genesis, and, in the case of 'The Private Life of the Master Race,' to the partial shift from the Third Reich of 1933-38 to the war period predicted in the original 'Furcht und Elend' cycle. The play's central theme of resistance, its propaganda value, and its political and artistic reception are addressed within their historical and ideological framework. The result is a challenging assessment of the play's strengths and limitations as a response to German totalitarianism. John J. White is Emeritus Professor of German and Comparative Literature at King's College London, and Ann White is Senior Lecturer in German at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Storytelling in the Works of Bunyan, Grimmelshausen, Defoe, and Schnabel
  • Janet Bertsch
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    15 October 2004
  • The modern novel appeared during the period of secularization and intellectual change that took place between 1660 and 1740. This book examines John Bunyan's'Grace Abounding' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' Johann Grimmelshausen's 'Simplicissimus,' Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe,' and J. G. Schnabel's 'Insel Felsenburg' as prose works that reflect the stages in this transition. The protagonists in these works try to learn to use language in a pure, uncorrupted way. Their attitudes towards language are founded on their understanding of the Bible, and when they tell their life stories, they follow the structure of the Bible, because they accept it as 'the' paradigmatic story. Thus the Bible becomes a tool to justify the value of telling 'any' story. The authors try to give their own texts some of Scripture's authority by imitating the biblical model, but this leads to problems with closure and other tensions. If Bunyan's explicitly religious works affirm the value of individual narratives as part of a single, universal story, Grimmelshausen's and Defoe's protagonists effectively replace the sacred text with their own powerful, authoritative stories. J. G. Schnabel illustrates the extent of the secularization process in 'Insel Felsenburg' when he defends the entertainment value of escapist fiction and uses the Bible as the fictional foundation of his utopian civilization: arguments about the moral value of narrative give way to the depiction of storytelling as an end in itself. But Bunyan, Grimmelshausen, Defoe, and Schnabel all use positive examples of the transfiguring effect of reading and telling stories, whether sacred or secular, to justify the value of their own works. Janet Bertsch teaches at Wolfson and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Joseph Roth's March into History
  • From the Early Novels to 'Radetzkymarsch' and 'Die Kapuzinergruft'
  • Kati Tonkin
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 October 2008
  • Joseph Roth was one of the most significant German-language writers of the interwar period, yet few major studies of his work have been published in English. Kati Tonkin's monograph spans Roth's novelistic career, challenging the widely held assumption that his writing can be divided into an early 'socialist' and a later 'monarchist' phase: that his late novels 'Radetzkymarsch' and 'Die Kapuzinergruft' are deeply nostalgic, presenting an idealized picture of the Habsburg Empire, a 'backward-turned utopia.' In contrast, Tonkin reads the later works not as escapist but as attempts to grasp the reasons for the failure of the empire. The historical context in which Roth operated - that of the late empire and its successor states - has been a focus of renewed interest since the end of the Cold War, as Central Europe re-emerges as a region with a distinct historical and cultural identity steeped in multinational Habsburg traditions, and Central European nations accede to the European Union. This book will therefore be of interest to students and scholars of early-20th-century Central European literature, history, and culture; of the socio-cultural environment of the late Habsburg Empire; of Jewish identity in German-speaking Central Europe; and of national identity in the multinational context. Kati Tonkin is Lecturer in German and European Studies at the University of Western Australia.

Political Change and Human Emancipation in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist
  • Elystan Griffiths
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    28 October 2004
  • The German writer Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was an unconventional and often controversial figure in his own day, and has remained so. His ideas on art, politics, and gender relations continue to challenge modern readers, and his complex and radically open texts remain the object of vigorous scholarly debate. Kleist has often been portrayed as a 'poet without a society,' whose writing served as escape from the realities of his social environment. This new study challenges such a view by situating Kleist in relation to the central political and philosophical debates of his momentous age. The study first establishes the German--and Prussian--context of Kleist's day, and then provides a short introduction to Kleist's life, here seen in particular relation to the political world. Developing his argument in relation to Kleist's literary work and essays in a series of close readings, Elystan Griffiths shows how Kleist's writings responded to four pressing political issues: the relationship of national culture and the state; education and social reform; the theory and practice of war; and administration and the delivery of justice. Griffiths sheds fresh light on Kleist's writing by placing emphasis on its intricacy and rich ambiguity, which are often simplified or overlooked in political studies of Kleist. Thus Griffiths furthers the critical understanding of Kleist's political thinking by uncovering crucial tensions between a pragmatic readiness for compromise and a utopian longing for freedom and truth. Elystan Griffiths is a Research Fellow in the Department of German Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany
  • Milkmaids on Parnassus
  • Susanne Kord
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    03 February 2003
  • This is the first comparative study of a highly unlikely group of authors: eighteenth-century women peasants in England, Scotland, and Germany, women who, as a rule, received little or no formal education and lived by manual labor, many of them in dire poverty. Among them are the English washerwoman Mary Collier, the English domestic servants Elizabeth Hands and Molly Leapor, the German cowherd Anna Louisa Karsch, the Scottish diarywoman Janet Little, the Scottish domestic servant Christian Milne, and the English milkmaid Ann Cromartie Yearsley. Their literature is here linked with one of the major eighteenth-century aesthetic trends in all three countries, the Natural Genius craze, which culminated in highland primitivism in Scotland and England, and in the 'Sturm und Drang' in Germany. Kord's analysis of the peasant women's works and the bourgeois response enables us to find new answers to questions that have centrally influenced our thinking about what makes art Art. Kord's book provides a fresh look at some of this fascinating literature, and at the roles and attitudes of the lower classes and of women in the Art world of the day. It also advances a revolutionary thesis: that the eighteenth-century bourgeoisie established itself as the dominant cultural class not primarily, as is commonly held, in opposition to aristocratic culture, but more importantly through its dissociation from and suppression of lower-class art forms. SUSANNE KORD is Professor and Head of the Department of German at University College London. Her book 'Little Detours: The Letters and Plays of Luise Gottsched' was published by Camden House in 2000.

Schiller's 'On Grace and Dignity' in its Cultural Context
  • Essays and a New Translation
  • Edited by Jane V. Curran, Christophe Fricker
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    20 June 2005
  • Friedrich Schiller is not only one of the leading poets and dramatists of German Classicism but also an inspiring philosopher. His essay 'über Anmut und Würde' (On Grace and Dignity) marks a radical break with Enlightenment thinking and its morally prescriptive agenda. Here Schiller does not pursue the prevalent interest in the individual artist as genius or in the creative act; instead, he establishes a harmony of mind and body in the aesthetic realm, putting down his thoughts on aesthetics in a systematic way for the first time, building on his own earlier forays into the field and on an intensive study of Kant. The popular essay form allowed Schiller to combine condensed thought with clear and rhetorically effective presentation, but his innovation here is his insistence on a freedom for art that affirms the moral freedom of reason, reuniting the human faculties radically separated by Enlightenment thought. Schiller sees aesthetic autonomy as the way forward for civilization. This is the first English scholarly edition of this pivotal essay, accompanied by the first comprehensive commentary on it. The essays focus on various facets of Schiller's essay and its socio-historical and philosophical context. Schiller's analysis is examined in the light of the thematic context of his plays as well as its surviving influence into the twentieth century. Contributors: Jane Curran, Christophe Fricker, David Pugh, Fritz Heuer, Alan Menhennet. Jane V. Curran is Professor of German at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Christophe Fricker is a D. Phil. candidate at St. John's College, Oxford.

A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Life and Works
  • Edited by Paul Bishop
  • With contributions by Ruth Abbey , Keith Ansell-Pearson , Rebecca Bamford , Thomas Brobjer , Daniel Conway , Adrian Del Caro , Carol Diethe , Michael Gillespie , Laurence Lampert , Duncan Large , Martin Liebscher , Martine Prange and Alan Schrift
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    16 July 2012
  • Nietzsche looms over modern literature and thought; according to Gottfried Benn, 'everything my generation discussed, thought through innerly; one could say: suffered; or one could even say: took to the point of exhaustion - all of it had already been said . . . by Nietzsche; all the rest was just exegesis.' Nietzsche's influence on intellectual life today is arguably as great; witness the various societies, journals, and websites and the steady stream of papers, collections, and monographs. This ‘Companion’ offers new essays from the best Nietzsche scholars, emphasizing the interrelatedness of his life and thought, eschewing a superficial biographical method but taking seriously his claim that great philosophy is 'the self-confession of its author and a kind of unintended and unremarked ‘memoir’.' Each essay examines a major work by Nietzsche; together, they offer an advanced introduction for students of German Studies, philosophy, and comparative literature as well as for the lay reader. Re-establishing the links between Nietzsche's philosophical texts and their biographical background, the volume alerts Nietzsche scholars and intellectual historians to the internal development of his thought and the aesthetic construction of his identity as a philosopher. Contributors: Ruth Abbey, Keith Ansell-Pearson, Rebecca Bamford, Paul Bishop, Thomas H. Brobjer, Daniel W. Conway, Adrian Del Caro, Carol Diethe, Michael Allen Gillespie and Keegan F. Callanan, Laurence Lampert, Duncan Large, Martin Liebscher, Martine Prange, Alan D. Schrift. Paul Bishop is Professor of German at the University of Glasgow.

Second-Generation Holocaust Literature
  • Legacies of Survival and Perpetration
  • Erin McGlothlin
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    17 October 2006
  • Among historical events of the 20th century, the Holocaust is unrivaled as the subject of both scholarly and literary writing. Literary responses include not only thousands of autobiographical and fictional texts written by survivors, but also, more recently, works by writers who are not survivors but nevertheless feel compelled to write about the Holocaust. Writers from what is known as the 'second generation' have produced texts that express their feeling of being powerfully marked by events of which they have had no direct experience. This book expands the commonly-used definition of 'second-generation literature,' which refers to texts written from the perspective of the children of survivors, to include texts written from the point of view of the children of Nazi perpetrators. With its innovative focus on the literary legacy of both groups, it investigates how second-generation writers employ similar tropes of stigmatization to express their troubled relationships to their parents' histories. Through readings of nine American, German, and French literary texts, Erin McGlothlin demonstrates how an anxiety with signification is manifested in the very structure of second-generation literature, revealing the extent to which the literary texts themselves are marked by the continuing aftershocks of the Holocaust. Erin McGlothlin is assistant professor of German at Washington University in St. Louis.

Goethe's 'Faust' and European Epic
  • Forgetting the Future
  • Arnd Bohm
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    26 February 2007
  • Goethe has long been enshrined as the greatest German poet, but his admirers have always been uneasy with the idea that he did not produce a great epic poem. A master in all the other genres and modes, it has been felt, should have done so. Arnd Bohm proposes that Goethe did compose an epic poem, which has been hidden in plain view: 'Faust.' Goethe saw that the Faust legends provided the stuff for a national epic: a German hero, a villain (Mephistopheles), a quest (to know all things), a sublime conflict (good versus evil), a love story (via Helen of Troy), and elasticity (all human knowledge could be accommodated by the plot). Bohm reveals the care with which Goethe draws upon such sources as Tasso, Ariosto, Dante, and Vergil. In the microcosm of the 'Auerbachs Keller' episode Faust has the opportunity to find 'what holds the world together in its essence' and to end his quest happily, but he fails. He forgets the future because he cannot remember what epic teaches. His course ends tragically, bringing him back to the origin of epic, as he replicates the Trojans' mistake of presuming to cheat the gods. Arnd Bohm is associate professor of English at Carleton University, Ottawa. Winner of the 2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award.

The First World War as a Clash of Cultures
  • Edited by Fred Bridgham
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    08 September 2006
  • This volume of essays examines the perceived rift between the British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and how the resultant war of words both reflects and helped determine historical, political, and, ultimately, military events. This vexed symbiosis is traced first through a survey of popular fiction, from alarmist British and German "invasion novels" to the visions of Erskine Childers and Saki and even P.G. Wodehouse; contrastingly, the "mixed-marriage novels" of von Arnim, Spottiswoode, and Wylie are considered. Further topics include D. H. Lawrence's ambivalent relationship with Germany, Carl Sternheim's coded anti-militarism, H. G. Wells's and Kurd Lasswitz's visions of their countries under Martian invasion, Nietzsche as the embodiment of Prussian warmongering, and the rise in Germany of anglophobic, anti-Spencerian evolutionism. Case histories of the positions of German and English academics in regard to the conflict round out the volume. CONTRIBUTORS: IAIN BOYD WHITE, HELENA RAGG-KIRKBY, RHYS WILLIAMS, INGO CORNILS, NICHOLAS MARTIN, GREGORY MOORE, STEFAN MANZ, ANDREAS HUTHER, HOLGER KLEIN. Fred Bridgham is Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at the University of Leeds.

Ludwig Börne
  • A Memorial
  • Heinrich Heine
  • Introduction by Jeffrey L. Sammons
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 August 2006
  • In 1840, Heinrich Heine, the major German poet of Jewish origin of the age, published a book on Ludwig Börne, the major German political writer of Jewish origin of the period, who had died three years before. Regarded by Heine and others as his best-written book, it was also his most disastrously conceived. Intended to recover the high ground of revolutionary principle and philosophy against the attacks mounted on him by Börne and his supporters, the book was instead met by a storm of outrage from which it seemed Heine's reputation might never recover. In the course of time, the evaluation was reversed; Heine was increasingly celebrated as a true herald of revolution. His vocabulary of Hellenism and Nazarenism, employed for the first time in 'Börne', was transmitted into English usage by Matthew Arnold. But 'Börne' itself is Heine's only major work that has never been fully translated into English. The commentary to the edition clarifies the conflict between the two most prominent German-Jewish public intellectuals of their time, corrects the misapprehensions constantly in circulation about their relationship and the book, and reveals the many peculiarities of the text. Jeffrey L. Sammons is Leavenworth Professor of German Emeritus at Yale University and the author of four books on Heine.

Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours
  • A New Translation with Commentary
  • Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Translated by Susan Ranson
  • Edited by Ben Hutchinson
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 April 2008
  • Rainer Maria Rilke is arguably the most important modern German-language poet. His 'New Poems, Duino Elegies,' and 'Sonnets to Orpheus' are pillars of 20th-century poetry. Yet his earlier verse is less known. 'The Book of Hours,' written in three bursts between 1899 and 1903, is Rilke's most formative work, covering a crucial period in his rapid ascent from 'fin-de-siècle' epigone to distinctive modern voice. The poems document Rilke's tour of Russia with Lou Andreas-Salomé, his hasty marriage and fathering of a child in Worpswede, and his turn toward the urban modernity of Paris. He assumes the persona of an artist-monk undertaking the Romantics' journey into the self, speaking to God as part transcendent deity, part needy neighbor. The poems can be read simply for their luminous lyricism, captured in Susan Ranson's superb new translation, which reproduces the music of the original German with impressive fluidity. An in-depth introduction explains the context of the work and elucidates its major themes, while the poem-by-poem commentary is helpful to the student and the general reader. A translator's note treating the technical problems of rhythm, meter, and rhyme that the translator of Rilke faces completes the volume. Susan Ranson is the co-translator, with Marielle Sutherland, of 'Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems' (Oxford World's Classics, 2011). Ben Hutchinson is Reader in Modern German at the University of Kent, UK.

Literature and Censorship in Restoration Germany
  • Repression and Rhetoric
  • Katy Heady
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 November 2009
  • In 1819, the German Confederation promulgated the infamous 'Carlsbad Decrees,' establishing censorship standards aimed at thwarting the political aspirations of post-Napoleonic Germany's rapidly emerging public sphere. This most comprehensive system of state censorship to that point in German lands remained in place until the revolutions of 1848, and is widely acknowledged to have had a profound influence on public discourse. However, although censorship during the period has been the object of much scholarly interest, little is known about its precise effects on literary writing. This book redresses that situation through detailed studies of six works composed and published in different parts of the Confederation by three prominent writers: Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Heinrich Heine, and Franz Grillparzer. By analyzing successive versions of these works, the study illustrates the thematic, linguistic, and aesthetic constraints censorship placed upon their writing, as well as the variety of literary evasion strategies that it stimulated. It demonstrates that while censorship inhibited and distorted German literary writing, it also led to the emergence of distinctively complex and inventive modes of literary expression that came to mark the epoch. Katy Heady received her PhD in German from the University of Sheffield in 2007.

We Are the Machine
  • The Computer, the Internet, and Information in Contemporary German Literature
  • Paul A. Youngman
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 September 2009
  • Despite our embrace of the sheer utility and productivity it has made possible, the revolution in Information Technology has led to unease about its possible misuse, abuse, and even its eventual domination of humankind. That German culture is not immune to this sense of disquiet is reflected in a broad variety of German-language fiction since the 1940s. This first study of the literary reception of IT in German-speaking lands begins with an analysis of a seminal novel from the beginning of the computer age, Heinrich Hauser's 'Gigant Hirn' (1948), then moves to its primary focus, the literature of the past two decades, ranging from Gerd Heidenreich's 'Die Nacht der Händler' (1995) to Daniel Glattauer's novel 'Gut gegen Nordwind' (2006). Along the way, it analyzes eleven works, including Barbara Frischmuth's novel 'Die Schrift des Freundes' (1998), René Pollesch's drama 'world wide web-slums' (2001), and Günter Grass's novella 'Im Krebsgang' (2003). As wildly different in approach as these works are, each has much to offer this investigation of the imaginary border dividing the human from the technological, a lingering, centuries-old construct created to ease the anxiety that technology has given rise to throughout the ages. Paul A. Youngman is associate professor of German at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Director of the Center for Humanities, Technology, and Science.

E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Serapiontic Principle
  • Critique and Creativity
  • Hilda M. Brown
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    25 October 2006
  • Critics have long sought to elucidate the multilayered texts of E. T. A. Hoffmann by applying to them a particular set of theories and ideas that Hoffmann himself subsumed under the heading of the 'Serapiontic Principle.' This principle, which Hoffmann expounded in his collection of tales 'Die Serapionsbrüder,' involves a complex intersection of the artist's faculties of imagination and perception. However, Hoffmann's mode of presenting his theory presents an unusual problem: rather than the usual form of an essay or treatise, he adopts a fictional framework, complete with a set of "characters"; this in turn sets up a number of perspectives on the theory itself. This combination of literary and theoretical elements presents a severe challenge to critics, and not surprisingly there has been little agreement about what the 'principle' actually entails or its wider relevance. With the principle as prime focus, this book provides detailed analysis of a broadly based selection of Hoffmann's texts, both theoretical and literary. It offers new perspectives on his narrative invention and the range of his theoretical interests, thus redefining his place at the forefront of German Romanticism. Hilda Meldrum Brown is professor of German at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford.

The Life and Works of Wolfgang Borchert
  • Gordon Burgess
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 August 2003
  • Wolfgang Borchert has been called 'the most important voice of post-war German literature.' He came to fame literally overnight when his play 'Draussen vor der Tür' (The Man Outside) was broadcast in the British zone of occupied Germany in February 1947 and evoked impassioned reactions both for and against. An examination of the plight of the returning soldier in the postwar world, it has become an icon of its time, capturing the futility of war and the true cost of the destruction in both physical and spiritual terms. Worldwide, 'Draussen vor der Tür' has been produced more often than any other German play. Between January 1946 and his death in November 1947, Borchert wrote over forty short stories on the model of Hemingway and Wolfe, many of them highly experimental. Indeed, he is widely regarded as having introduced the short-story form into German literature. This is the first full-length account of Borchert's life and works in English. It benefits from unprecedented access to archival material and from interviews with Borchert's contemporaries. The study links Borchert's own literary ambition with the enlightened family circumstances in which he grew up, and charts his development from a rebellious teenager with a passion for theater via his fighting as a soldier on Germany's Eastern Front and his imprisonment by the Nazis to his brief but intense career as a writer. Gordon Burgess is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Aberdeen.

German Culture, Politics, and Literature into the Twenty-First Century
  • Beyond Normalization
  • Edited by Stuart Taberner, Paul Cooke
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    08 September 2006
  • This volume features sixteen thought-provoking essays by renowned international experts on German society, culture, and politics that, together, provide a comprehensive study of Germany's postunification process of 'normalization.' Essays ranging across a variety of disciplines including politics, foreign policy, economics, literature, architecture, and film examine how since 1990 the often contested concept of normalization has become crucial to Germany's self-understanding. Despite the apparent emergence of a 'new' Germany, the essays demonstrate that normalization is still in question, and that perennial concerns - notably the Nazi past and the legacy of the GDR - remain central to political and cultural discourses and affect the country's efforts to deal with the new challenges of globalization and the instability and polarization it brings. This is the first major study in English or German of the impact of the normalization debate across the range of cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and historical discourses. CONTRIBUTORS: STEPHEN BROCKMANN, JEREMY LEAMAN, SEBASTIAN HARNISCH AND KERRY LONGHURST, LOTHAR PROBST, SIMON WARD, ANNA SAUNDERS, ANNETTE SEIDEL ARPACI, CHRIS HOMEWOOD, ANDREW PLOWMAN, HELMUT SCHMITZ, KAROLINE VON OPPEN, WILLIAM COLLINS DONAHUE, KATHRIN SCHöDEL, STUART TABERNER, PAUL COOKE. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society and Paul Cooke is Senior Lecturer in German Studies, both at the University of Leeds.

Trial by Fire and Battle in Medieval German Literature
  • Vickie L. Ziegler
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    28 June 2004
  • Medieval judicial ordeals, especially trial by fire or battle, conjure up vivid pictures in the modern imagination. Yet popular perceptions of the Middle Ages leave the reader without a context in which to understand these most drastic of medieval judicial remedies. This book analyzes literary texts that provide some of the most vivid and detailed accounts of the medieval ordeal: the dramatic treason trials in late medieval Charlemagne epics. The two epics chosen - Stricker's 'Karl der Groe' and the 'Karlmeinet' - treat trial by battle as the living legal reality it was in those times, yet display very different attitudes toward feud and punishment in their respective (13th- and 14th-century) societies. Gottfried's 'Tristan' contains an ordeal by battle, of which the author approves, and an ordeal by fire, of which he does not, reflecting a common position of the intelligentsia of the time. Well after the condemnation of ordeals by the Fourth Lateran Council, the Kunigunde legend preserves the ordeal by fire much as it was portrayed in the mid-12th-century Richardis legend, while Stricker's short secular burlesque 'The Hot Iron,' written in the mid 13th century, makes sport of this formerly serious legal proceeding, reflecting its sudden abandonment as a legal proof following the council's decision. The study brings extensive background material in legal and cultural history to bear on literary texts, helping both medievalists and general readers understand the function of the ordeal in the texts as well as in the larger society for whom these works were written. Vickie L. Ziegler is professor of German and Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.

An Introduction to the Works of Peter Weiss
  • Olaf Berwald
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 August 2003
  • The plays and prose works of the German writer, director, and political activist Peter Weiss (1916-1982) were immensely influential in the shaping of European Modernism in the second half of the twentieth century. Combining exploratory aesthetic openness with an uncompromising ethical drive, Weiss's literary works, especially the plays 'Marat/Sade' (1964), 'The Investigation' (1968), and 'Hölderlin' (1971), as well as the novel 'The Aesthetics of Resistance' (1975-81) continue to provide vital points of reference for any discussion of culture and politics in our times. Berwald's study serves as a comprehensive introduction to Weiss's work and vision. The introductory chapter outlines Weiss's life and work in exile. Three chapters provide detailed discussions of Weiss's theater work, from his early grotesque plays and the documentary dramas from the 1960s that address Auschwitz, Angola, and Vietnam, to his most complex plays in which intellectuals are staged as outsiders. The subsequent four chapters discuss Weiss's prose works, which include his autobiographical novels from the early 1960s, essays and notebooks on art and politics, and his summum opus, 'The Aesthetics of Resistance'. Olaf Berwald is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Tennessee.

The Wanderer in Nineteenth-Century German Literature
  • Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism
  • Andrew Cusack
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    01 August 2008
  • The wanderer is an indispensable part of the German cultural imaginary. The nineteenth-century prominence of the motif owes much to the self-conception of the intellectual pioneers of the day as wanderers. The motif is also a key to interpretation of the social and cultural phenomena of a turbulent century that began with the emancipatory claims of the Enlightenment and ended in untrammeled industrialism. Writers from Goethe to Büchner, Fontane to Holtei were keenly aware of the motif's interpretive value, attempting to grasp with it not only such developments as mass migration and disappearing institutions but also unprecedented opportunities for artistic and scientific innovation. This book re-interprets canonical works such as Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister' novels, Heine's 'Harzreise', and Büchner's 'Lenz', examines underresearched works by Fontane and Raabe, and charts new territory with readings of works by Gotthelf and Holtei - a selection of texts that reveals the vast scope and changing function of the wanderer motif. Andrew Cusack pays scrupulous attention to the historical specificity of each work and to its relationship to contemporary aesthetic and philosophical currents, revealing the wanderer motif to be a significant vehicle of cultural memory that sustained the ideas of the Enlightenment and of Romanticism. Andrew Cusack is a Lecturer in the Department of Germanic Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

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