Wow! eBook
From Kafka to Sebald: Modernism and Narrative Form: No. 5
Author(s): Sabine Wilke (Author, Editor)
- Publisher: Continuum
- Publication Date: 23 Aug. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 160 pages
- ISBN-10: 1441122672
- ISBN-13: 9781441122674
Book Description
This volume is a response to a renewed interest in narrative form in contemporary literary studies, taking up the question of literary narratives and their encounters with modernism and postmodernism within the German-language milieu. Original essays written by scholars of German and Comparative Literature approach the issue of narrative form anew, analyzing the ways in which modernist and postmodernist German-language narratives frame and/or deconstruct historical narratives. Beginning with the German-language modernist author par excellence, Franz Kafka, the volume’s essays explore the unique perspective on historical change offered by literature. The authors (Kafka, Kappacher, Goll, Bernhard, Menasse, and Wolf, among others) and works interpreted in the essays included here span the period from before World War I to the post-Holocaust, post-Wall present. Individual essays focus on modernism, postmodernism, narrative theory, and autobiography.
Editorial Reviews
Review
From Kafka to Sebald is a thrilling contribution to the contemporary reinvigoration of narratology. What is more, it sheds light on the ‘Kafka-effect’ in German literature, by bringing Kafka s writing into dialogue with those who shared his Habsburg moment Freud, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler and then examining his legacy in authors such as Christa Wolf, Robert Menasse, and W.G. Sebald. The volume ultimately demonstrates deftly how modernism s formal innovations did not come out of thin air but were embedded profoundly in the historical traumas of twentieth-century Germany and Austria. –John Zilcosky, Chair, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto, Canada
About the Author
Sabine Wilke is Professor of German at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, where she is also associated with European Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, and cultural studies. She has written books and articles on body constructions in modern German literature and culture, German unification, the history of German film and theater, contemporary German authors and filmmakers, German colonialism and the overlapping concerns of postcolonialism and ecocriticism.
