Author: Cheryl Dueck
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004485821
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the end of East Germany’s socialist regime and a new beginning for a unified German Federal Republic. Cultural historians agree that the event caused one of the deepest rifts in time and thinking seen by an entire generation of Germans—a rift that left its mark on the psyche of every citizen, challenging notions of the personal and the political, and crashing traditional understandings of the individual and the collective self. In this bold rethinking of the question, Cheryl Dueck goes beyond the social, political, and psychological discourses that Marx and Freud, Foucault and Lacan viewed as the initiators of modern (socialist) identities to explore the literature and discourse of the quest for unity of the female subject. Reading such authors as Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann, Helga Königsdorf, and Helga Schubert, Dueck traces the striking fissures which run through time and through the female self, haunting women within the socialist project. The book shows how two generations of women writers have struggled consciously and systematically in their letters, aesthetic writings, and literary production to create a new language to express their own sense of self within a restrictive socialist and patriarchal system. Rifts in Time and in the Self offers an unprecedented look at the reconceptualizations of the female subject during several phases of GDR history, and women writers’ persistent attempt to carve out spaces of identity and community.
Rifts in Time and in the Self
Author: Cheryl Dueck
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004485821
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the end of East Germany’s socialist regime and a new beginning for a unified German Federal Republic. Cultural historians agree that the event caused one of the deepest rifts in time and thinking seen by an entire generation of Germans—a rift that left its mark on the psyche of every citizen, challenging notions of the personal and the political, and crashing traditional understandings of the individual and the collective self. In this bold rethinking of the question, Cheryl Dueck goes beyond the social, political, and psychological discourses that Marx and Freud, Foucault and Lacan viewed as the initiators of modern (socialist) identities to explore the literature and discourse of the quest for unity of the female subject. Reading such authors as Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann, Helga Königsdorf, and Helga Schubert, Dueck traces the striking fissures which run through time and through the female self, haunting women within the socialist project. The book shows how two generations of women writers have struggled consciously and systematically in their letters, aesthetic writings, and literary production to create a new language to express their own sense of self within a restrictive socialist and patriarchal system. Rifts in Time and in the Self offers an unprecedented look at the reconceptualizations of the female subject during several phases of GDR history, and women writers’ persistent attempt to carve out spaces of identity and community.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004485821
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the end of East Germany’s socialist regime and a new beginning for a unified German Federal Republic. Cultural historians agree that the event caused one of the deepest rifts in time and thinking seen by an entire generation of Germans—a rift that left its mark on the psyche of every citizen, challenging notions of the personal and the political, and crashing traditional understandings of the individual and the collective self. In this bold rethinking of the question, Cheryl Dueck goes beyond the social, political, and psychological discourses that Marx and Freud, Foucault and Lacan viewed as the initiators of modern (socialist) identities to explore the literature and discourse of the quest for unity of the female subject. Reading such authors as Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann, Helga Königsdorf, and Helga Schubert, Dueck traces the striking fissures which run through time and through the female self, haunting women within the socialist project. The book shows how two generations of women writers have struggled consciously and systematically in their letters, aesthetic writings, and literary production to create a new language to express their own sense of self within a restrictive socialist and patriarchal system. Rifts in Time and in the Self offers an unprecedented look at the reconceptualizations of the female subject during several phases of GDR history, and women writers’ persistent attempt to carve out spaces of identity and community.
The Portrayal of Jews in Gdr Prose Fiction
Author: Paul O'Doherty
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004654860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
This volume is the first comprehensive single study of Jewish themes in any of the post-1945 German literatures. It presents literature on Jewish themes by Jewish and non-Jewish authors in the cultural, social and political context of the Soviet Zone/GDR during the entire 45 years of its history from 1945 to 1990. It offers a brief history of Jews in the GDR, before looking, in four chronologically ordered chapters, at the history of publishing on Jewish themes in the GDR. Some 28 texts by 19 different authors, including Anna Seghers, Stephan Hermlin, Arnold Zweig, Franz Fühmann, Johannes Bobrowski, Jurek Becker, Stefan Heym, Günter Kunert, Christa Wolf and Helga Königsdorf, are then singled out for closer analysis. Such themes as historical anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Jewish resistance, Jewish assimilation, Heine, Marx, Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish survival, and Jews in the GDR are all discussed in the book. The volume also offers evidence of the political influences on publishing on Jewish themes at various stages in the GDR's history. In addition, a structured bibliography of some 1100 items is offered, approximately 750 of which were published in the GDR with a Jewish content or theme. The study should be of interest to students of contemporary German literature and politics, the GDR, and of Jewish studies in the wider context.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004654860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
This volume is the first comprehensive single study of Jewish themes in any of the post-1945 German literatures. It presents literature on Jewish themes by Jewish and non-Jewish authors in the cultural, social and political context of the Soviet Zone/GDR during the entire 45 years of its history from 1945 to 1990. It offers a brief history of Jews in the GDR, before looking, in four chronologically ordered chapters, at the history of publishing on Jewish themes in the GDR. Some 28 texts by 19 different authors, including Anna Seghers, Stephan Hermlin, Arnold Zweig, Franz Fühmann, Johannes Bobrowski, Jurek Becker, Stefan Heym, Günter Kunert, Christa Wolf and Helga Königsdorf, are then singled out for closer analysis. Such themes as historical anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Jewish resistance, Jewish assimilation, Heine, Marx, Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish survival, and Jews in the GDR are all discussed in the book. The volume also offers evidence of the political influences on publishing on Jewish themes at various stages in the GDR's history. In addition, a structured bibliography of some 1100 items is offered, approximately 750 of which were published in the GDR with a Jewish content or theme. The study should be of interest to students of contemporary German literature and politics, the GDR, and of Jewish studies in the wider context.
Rückblicke auf die Literatur der DDR
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333959
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494
Book Description
Obwohl die DDR nunmehr ein abgeschlossenes Kapitel in der deutschen Geschichte geworden ist, halt die Auseinandersetzung um das, was von ihr bleibt, auch im Abstand von mehr als zehn Jahren an. Selbst nach dem deutsch-deutschen Literaturstreit unmittelbar nach der Wende, der seinerseits schon Ruckblicken und Bilanzierungen ausgesetzt wurde, bleibt der Stellenwert der Literatur in und aus der DDR ein umstrittenes Terrain. Ungeachtet dessen, dass es Einhelligkeit in literarischen Fragen ohnehin nicht geben kann, sind die Urteile zur Literatur der DDR naturlich auch von den Erfahrungen und Erlebnissen mit der DDR gepragt. In diesem Band haben wir uns fur eine Sicht von aussen und von innen gleichermassen interessiert.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333959
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494
Book Description
Obwohl die DDR nunmehr ein abgeschlossenes Kapitel in der deutschen Geschichte geworden ist, halt die Auseinandersetzung um das, was von ihr bleibt, auch im Abstand von mehr als zehn Jahren an. Selbst nach dem deutsch-deutschen Literaturstreit unmittelbar nach der Wende, der seinerseits schon Ruckblicken und Bilanzierungen ausgesetzt wurde, bleibt der Stellenwert der Literatur in und aus der DDR ein umstrittenes Terrain. Ungeachtet dessen, dass es Einhelligkeit in literarischen Fragen ohnehin nicht geben kann, sind die Urteile zur Literatur der DDR naturlich auch von den Erfahrungen und Erlebnissen mit der DDR gepragt. In diesem Band haben wir uns fur eine Sicht von aussen und von innen gleichermassen interessiert.
Shifting Perspectives
Author: Dennis Tate
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571133724
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Tate provides a detailed account of 'subjective authenticity' in German literature: its origins in the 1930s' exile debates, its evolution during the GDR's lifespan, and its manifestations in the work of five East German authors: Brigitte Reinmann, Franz Fühmann, Stefan Heym, Günter de Bruyn and Christa Wolf.
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571133724
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Tate provides a detailed account of 'subjective authenticity' in German literature: its origins in the 1930s' exile debates, its evolution during the GDR's lifespan, and its manifestations in the work of five East German authors: Brigitte Reinmann, Franz Fühmann, Stefan Heym, Günter de Bruyn and Christa Wolf.
Retrospect and Review
Author: Atkins
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004651926
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
In Retrospect and Review an international team of scholars explore East German literature, and the circumstances of its production, in the last phase of the German Democratic Republic's existence. The provocative claim of the novelist, playwright and essayist Christoph Hein, 'Ich nehme außerdem für mich in Anspruch [...] elfmal das Ende der DDR beschrieben zu haben, ' serves as the starting-point for the twenty-three contributors to the volume, who consider the many and varied ways in which Hein and his fellow writers signalled and diagnosed the demise of the GDR. The fraught relationship between the state and its intellectuals inevitably forms a consistent theme in the studies of writers as diverse as Anna Seghers and Kito Lorenc, Christa Wolf and Jurek Becker, or Irmtraud Morgner and Heiner Müller. However, the process of 'retrospect and review' also reveals the innovative and independent-minded character of the culture of the GDR's later years. Several contributors trace the emergence of a strong and distinctive women's writing which increasingly and subversively imposed itself on the hitherho patriarchal literary landscape of the GDR. And in the literature of the 1970s and 1980s experimental narrative strategies take on a political role as a counter-discourse to a stubbornly inflexible political order.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004651926
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
In Retrospect and Review an international team of scholars explore East German literature, and the circumstances of its production, in the last phase of the German Democratic Republic's existence. The provocative claim of the novelist, playwright and essayist Christoph Hein, 'Ich nehme außerdem für mich in Anspruch [...] elfmal das Ende der DDR beschrieben zu haben, ' serves as the starting-point for the twenty-three contributors to the volume, who consider the many and varied ways in which Hein and his fellow writers signalled and diagnosed the demise of the GDR. The fraught relationship between the state and its intellectuals inevitably forms a consistent theme in the studies of writers as diverse as Anna Seghers and Kito Lorenc, Christa Wolf and Jurek Becker, or Irmtraud Morgner and Heiner Müller. However, the process of 'retrospect and review' also reveals the innovative and independent-minded character of the culture of the GDR's later years. Several contributors trace the emergence of a strong and distinctive women's writing which increasingly and subversively imposed itself on the hitherho patriarchal literary landscape of the GDR. And in the literature of the 1970s and 1980s experimental narrative strategies take on a political role as a counter-discourse to a stubbornly inflexible political order.
Complicity, Censorship and Criticism
Author: Sara Jones
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110237962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
This study develops an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the cultural history of the German Democratic Republic, examining the interaction between intellectuals and Party functionaries from a literary and historical perspective. Divided into three case studies, the work focuses on writers positioned along a spectrum of conformity and dissent and who had quite different relationships to political power: Hermann Kant, Stefan Heym and Elfriede Brüning. Drawing on and comparing unpublished archive material, autobiography and the literary output of the three named writers, this study brings to the fore the ambiguities and contradictions of intellectual life in the GDR. Tensions between the different sources point towards tensions inherent in the subject positions of writers, publishers, reviewers and cultural authorities. This granular approach to the study of GDR cultural history challenges top-down interpretations and builds into a theoretical understanding of GDR cultural life based on the concepts of ambiguity and ambivalence and the increasing fragmentation of ideology. Comparison with other spheres of GDR life points towards the significance of these concepts for the study of East German society as a whole.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110237962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
This study develops an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the cultural history of the German Democratic Republic, examining the interaction between intellectuals and Party functionaries from a literary and historical perspective. Divided into three case studies, the work focuses on writers positioned along a spectrum of conformity and dissent and who had quite different relationships to political power: Hermann Kant, Stefan Heym and Elfriede Brüning. Drawing on and comparing unpublished archive material, autobiography and the literary output of the three named writers, this study brings to the fore the ambiguities and contradictions of intellectual life in the GDR. Tensions between the different sources point towards tensions inherent in the subject positions of writers, publishers, reviewers and cultural authorities. This granular approach to the study of GDR cultural history challenges top-down interpretations and builds into a theoretical understanding of GDR cultural life based on the concepts of ambiguity and ambivalence and the increasing fragmentation of ideology. Comparison with other spheres of GDR life points towards the significance of these concepts for the study of East German society as a whole.
Romantik-- eine Lebenskräftige Krankheit
Author: Erika Tunner
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789051832808
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : de
Pages : 276
Book Description
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789051832808
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : de
Pages : 276
Book Description
Literary Communication from Consensus to Rupture
Author: Colin Barr Grant
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004454675
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
This study, the first of its kind in English, sets out to analyse literature as a form of social communication by considering developments in literary theory and practice in the German Democratic Republic in the Honecker era. Attention focuses on the changes in the discourses of literary theory and literary practice in a semi-public sphere controlled by an increasingly ossified political discourse. Key developments in the 1970s, hailed by GDR theorists as the point of departure for a new kind of literary communication in society, are carefully examined. The study then contrasts these idealised views of literature as social communication with practice and theory in the late 1970s and 1980s. In clear trends in practice (and, to a lesser extent, in theory) communication was perceived as being increasingly problematic and conflictual. The development from this sense of destabilisation to the rupturing in communication between literature and society, between literature and political authority and in literature itself became more salient in the 1980s as its forms and themes radically challenged the mounting stagnation of the discourse of political power. These conflicts are illustrated and discussed with the aid of detailed analyses of key literary texts and previously unpublished interviews with leading theorists.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004454675
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
This study, the first of its kind in English, sets out to analyse literature as a form of social communication by considering developments in literary theory and practice in the German Democratic Republic in the Honecker era. Attention focuses on the changes in the discourses of literary theory and literary practice in a semi-public sphere controlled by an increasingly ossified political discourse. Key developments in the 1970s, hailed by GDR theorists as the point of departure for a new kind of literary communication in society, are carefully examined. The study then contrasts these idealised views of literature as social communication with practice and theory in the late 1970s and 1980s. In clear trends in practice (and, to a lesser extent, in theory) communication was perceived as being increasingly problematic and conflictual. The development from this sense of destabilisation to the rupturing in communication between literature and society, between literature and political authority and in literature itself became more salient in the 1980s as its forms and themes radically challenged the mounting stagnation of the discourse of political power. These conflicts are illustrated and discussed with the aid of detailed analyses of key literary texts and previously unpublished interviews with leading theorists.
Volker Braun in Perspective
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004334467
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
On the occasion of Volker Braun's 65th and GDR/German Monitor's 25th birthday an attempt is made to re-evaluate Braun's contribution to 20th and 21st century German literature. The seventeen essays of the collection, written by a truly international set of scholars, demonstrate the unique quality and breadth of Braun's writing, spanning all literary genres. But not only that, they also reveal the diversity of interpretative perspectives which Braun's oeuvre productively stimulates. They showcase an author who refuses to indulge complacently in past achievements and an opus that defies all attempts at labelling. Braun's texts, so the verdict of the contributors, are driven by an insatiable thirst for the whole story, the depth beneath the superficial, the complex truth of our human predicament; for the precise expression which is not caught up in the limitations of the dominant ideology, whatever it might be.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004334467
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
On the occasion of Volker Braun's 65th and GDR/German Monitor's 25th birthday an attempt is made to re-evaluate Braun's contribution to 20th and 21st century German literature. The seventeen essays of the collection, written by a truly international set of scholars, demonstrate the unique quality and breadth of Braun's writing, spanning all literary genres. But not only that, they also reveal the diversity of interpretative perspectives which Braun's oeuvre productively stimulates. They showcase an author who refuses to indulge complacently in past achievements and an opus that defies all attempts at labelling. Braun's texts, so the verdict of the contributors, are driven by an insatiable thirst for the whole story, the depth beneath the superficial, the complex truth of our human predicament; for the precise expression which is not caught up in the limitations of the dominant ideology, whatever it might be.
Breaking Boundaries
Author: Karen J. Leeder
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198159100
Category : German poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
This book examines the controversial younger generation of poets who were 'born into' the established socialist state of the German Democratic Republic. Introducing an extraordinary decade of GDR poetry, it focuses on the ways in which this experience is translated into the metaphorical and linguistic structures of their texts, and the ways in which they set about breaking the literary and political boundaries which were imposed upon them, radicalizing notions of the subject, of history, of language, of the poetic enterprise itself. The volume also assesses what will remain - after the fall of the Wall, and the revelations of the 'Stasi' files - of this radical poetic project. This unique study examines the poetry of some fifty writers from both the official and the underground publishing scenes, offering them up as a case-study in the vexed negotiations between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and as a contribution to the rewriting of German literary history after 1945.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198159100
Category : German poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
This book examines the controversial younger generation of poets who were 'born into' the established socialist state of the German Democratic Republic. Introducing an extraordinary decade of GDR poetry, it focuses on the ways in which this experience is translated into the metaphorical and linguistic structures of their texts, and the ways in which they set about breaking the literary and political boundaries which were imposed upon them, radicalizing notions of the subject, of history, of language, of the poetic enterprise itself. The volume also assesses what will remain - after the fall of the Wall, and the revelations of the 'Stasi' files - of this radical poetic project. This unique study examines the poetry of some fifty writers from both the official and the underground publishing scenes, offering them up as a case-study in the vexed negotiations between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and as a contribution to the rewriting of German literary history after 1945.