Everyday Life as Alternative Space in Exile Writing: The Novels of Anna Gmeyner, Selma Kahn, Hilde Spiel, Martina Wied and Hermynia Zur Muehlen

ISBN-13: 9783039105243 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 264 str.

Stephan, Alexander

Opis

This book is the ?rst comparative study of the novels written by ?ve German-speaking women Anna Gmeyner, Selma Kahn, Hilde Spiel, Martina Wied and Hermynia Zur Muhlen who had to ?ee National Socialist Central Europe. Gmeyner, Spiel, Wied and Zur Muhlen found refuge in Britain and thus added together with male colleagues such as Stefan Zweig and Robert Neumann an important but rarely investigated new dimension to the British literary landscape. The aim of this study is to reassess the women refugee writers narrative strategies and integrate their work within feminist literary studies. The author investigates the ?ve writers narrativisation of everyday life, used to subvert the dominant discourse, and their portrayal of the intersection between class, racial and gender oppression. She also shows their innovative ways of picturing the gendered tension between the experiences of exile and exile as a modernist metaphor as well as their search for ways to refute the Nationalist Socialist rewriting of history. The book situates the novels within the theoretical discussions surrounding exile studies, social history and women s writing."

Recenzje

«This study is [...] essential reading for scholars of German literature in the field of Exile, Women's and Jewish Studies, and provides rich background reading to the novels discussed. Hammel's latest volume should further encourage researchers to expand their scope of German Studies and to treat narratives written by women in exile as an intrinsic and vital part of the literary canon.» (Kirsten A. Krick-Aigner, Austrian Studies)

Spis treści

Contents: Exile Studies in Germany, Austria and Britain - Feminist readings of women refugee novels - Portrayal of Jewish characters - Representations of Women - The possibilities of everyday life - Family Sagas as multicultural utopias - Respacialisation of politics - Alternative narrative space.

O autorze

The Author: Andrea Hammel is a Research Fellow at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies and a lecturer in German culture and history at the University of Sussex. A former visiting lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin, she has published widely on the writing of women refugees, German-speaking refugees who came to Britain and survivors' autobiographies.