In recent years a debate has arisen on the applicability of postcolonial theory to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some have argued that Austria-Hungary's lack of overseas territories renders the concepts of colonialism and postcolonialism irrelevant, while others have cited the quasi-colonial attitudes of the Viennese elite towards the various -subject peoples- of the empire as a point of comparison. Imperial Messages applies postcolonial theory to works of orientalist fiction by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka, all subjects of the empire, challenging Edward Said's notion...
In recent years a debate has arisen on the applicability of postcolonial theory to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some have argued that Austria-Hungary'...
In the Weimar Republic, fashion was not only manipulated by the various mass media -- film, magazines, advertising, photography, and popular literature -- but also emerged as a powerful medium for women's self-expression. Female writers and journalists, including Helen Grund, Irmgard Keun, Vicki Baum, Elsa Maria Bug, and numerous others engaged in a challenging, self-reflective commentary on current styles. By regularly publishing on these topics in the illustrated press and popular literature, they transformed traditional genres and carved out significant public space for themselves. This...
In the Weimar Republic, fashion was not only manipulated by the various mass media -- film, magazines, advertising, photography, and popular literatur...
The Age of Goethe is widely viewed as the apogee of German culture. Its writers and thinkers, especially Goethe, have been exalted as role models for life and art, particularly after 1945. Yet in the 1970s, a new generation of German writers in both East and West rebelled against the postwar hagiography, taking up a tradition of imaginatively engaging with the giants of the period, casting them in major roles in their works in order to critique the nation's past and its present, a tradition that has been carried on by more contemporary writers. This is the first book-length study devoted to...
The Age of Goethe is widely viewed as the apogee of German culture. Its writers and thinkers, especially Goethe, have been exalted as role models for ...
The events of 1989 and German unification were seismic historical moments. Although 1989 appeared to signify a healing of the war-torn history of the twentieth century, unification posed the question of German cultural identity afresh. Politicians, historians, writers, filmmakers, architects, and the wider public engaged in "memory contests" over such questions as the legitimacy of alternative biographies, West German hegemony, and the normalization of German history. This dynamic, contested, and still ongoing transformation of German cultural identity is the topic of this volume of new...
The events of 1989 and German unification were seismic historical moments. Although 1989 appeared to signify a healing of the war-torn history of the ...
Twenty years on from the dramatic events that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the GDR, the subjective dimension of German unification is still far from complete. The nature of the East German state remains a matter of cultural as well as political debate. This volume of new research focuses on competing memories of the GDR and the ways they have evolved in the mass media, literature, and film since 1989-90. Taking as its point of departure the impact of iconic visual images of the fall of the Wall on our understanding of the historical GDR, the volume first considers...
Twenty years on from the dramatic events that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the GDR, the subjective dimension of German un...
Modernity, according to some views, poses the problem of homo politicus -- the problem of how to act in a moral universe without a -master narrative, - without a final foundation. From this angle, the oeuvre of Heinrich von Kleist -- novellas, dramas, and essays -- addresses problems emerging from a new universe of Kantian provenance, in many ways the same universe we inhabit today. This volume of new essays investigates Kleist's position in our ever-changing conception of modernity, employing aesthetic, narrative, philosophical, biographical, political, economic, anthropological,...
Modernity, according to some views, poses the problem of homo politicus -- the problem of how to act in a moral universe without a -master narrative, ...
The question of Heinrich von Kleist's reading and reception of Kant's philosophy has never been satisfactorily answered. The present study aims to reassess this question, particularly in the light of Kant's rising importance for the humanities today. It argues not only that Kleist was influenced by Kant, but also that he may be understood as a Kantian, albeit an unorthodox one. The volume integrates material previously published by the author, now updated, with new chapters to form a greater whole. What results is a coherent set of approaches that illuminates the question of Kleist's...
The question of Heinrich von Kleist's reading and reception of Kant's philosophy has never been satisfactorily answered. The present study aims to rea...
In German Studies the literary phenomenon of melancholy, which has a longstanding and diverse history in European letters, has typically been associated with the Early Modern and Baroque periods, Romanticism, and the crisis of modernity. This association, alongside the dominant psychoanalytical view of melancholy in German memory discourses since the 1960s, has led to its neglect as an important literary mode in postwar German literature, a situation the present book seeks to redress by identifying and analyzing epochal postwar works that use melancholy traditions to comment on German history...
In German Studies the literary phenomenon of melancholy, which has a longstanding and diverse history in European letters, has typically been associat...
Since unification, a radical shift has taken place in Germans' view of their country's immediate past, with 1989 replacing 1945 as the primary caesura. The cold-war division, the failed socialist state, the '68 student movement, and the Red Army Faction -- historical flashpoints involving political oppression, civil disobedience, and the longing for utopian solutions to social injustice -- have come to be seen as decisive moments in a collective history that unites East and West even as it divides them. Telling stories about a shared past, establishing foundational myths, and finding...
Since unification, a radical shift has taken place in Germans' view of their country's immediate past, with 1989 replacing 1945 as the primary caesura...
The late nineteenth century was a crucial period for the development of German fiction. Political unification and industrialization were accompanied by the rise of a mass market for German literature, and with it the beginnings of the German bestseller.Offering escape, romance, or adventure, as well as insights into the modern world, nineteenth-century bestsellers often captured the imagination of readers well into the twentieth century and beyond. However, many have been neglected by scholars. This volume offers new readings of literary realism by focusing not on the accepted intellectual...
The late nineteenth century was a crucial period for the development of German fiction. Political unification and industrialization were accompanied b...
