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The book explores the intimate connection between poetry and politics in modernity and, in particular, in liberal and fascist Italy. Through a historical and interdisciplinary approach, the essays focus on various fundamental passages of liberal system crisis: political poetry as an act of rebellion against the social and economic system; as a tool of disintegration of bourgeois morality and civilization; as a pillar of the building and consolidation of the fascist regime; as a central instrument of the myth of the'new man'. What emerges is a mosaic capable of enlightening the values and disvalues and the transformation of Italian radical and nationalist mindset, through the elimination of the boundaries between ‘matter'and ‘spirit'and between different disciplines: as in the liberal period, political poetry deals with new issues such as Time, Space, and the Body, so in the totalitarian Fascist culture integrates and contaminates other aesthetic forms: theatre, dance, architecture

Las escrituras del presente son precarias porque así lo es el tiempo que las alumbra, complejo e inestable. Bajo la pretensión de radiografiar las principales tendencias de la literatura hispánica contemporánea, el presente volumen reúne trece trabajos que atienden específicamente a sus elementos formales. Así, tras un prólogo en el que Francisca Noguerol desgrana las claves de lectura de los textos que se sitúan en la tradición rupturista de la vanguardia apostando por la complejidad y el compromiso ético, se suceden un'Panorama'y cuatro secciones dedicadas a las'Di(soluciones)'o poéticas radicales, a las'Escrituras expandidas'hacia otros códigos o soportes, a las'Ficciones y fakeciones'que cuestionan los contornos de la realidad y a las'Distopías'tan propias de nuestra época.

Der 90. Geburtstag im Jahr 2019 hat Michael Ende (1929-1995) erneut in die Öffentlichkeit gerückt und auch die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit seinem literarischen Schaffen beflügelt. In dessen Zentrum steht die Unendliche Geschichte (1979) mit ihrer Idee einer Rettung des mythologischen Menschheitserbes. Aufmerksamkeit erlangen auch Endes Erzählbände allein für Erwachsene mit ihrer Nähe zu Franz Kafka und Jorge Luis Borges. Beachtung findet ebenfalls das musikdramatische Schaffen und Endes Werkgemeinschaft mit dem Komponisten Wilfried Hiller. Dass Ende zu den weltweit rezipierten deutschen Schriftstellern gehört, belegen elf Länderartikel, die einen Bogen von Japan über die arabische Welt und Europa bis nach Brasilien schlagen.

Freud and psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. But in the contemporary'entertainment'culture, is rebellion still a viable option? Is it still possible to build and embrace a counterculture? For whom—and against what?Julia Kristeva illustrates the advances and impasses of rebel culture through the experiences of three twentieth-century writers: the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, the surrealist Louis Aragon, and the theorist Roland Barthes. These figures, according to Kristeva, took part in a revolution against accepted notions of identity—of one's relation to others. She places their accomplishments in the context of other revolutionary movements in art, literature, and politics, also offering an illuminating discussion of Freud's groundbreaking work on rebellion.

This volume comprises articles by scholars from three disciplines – literary studies, TEFL methodology, and history – from three universities – University College Cork (UCC), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/Leuven Centre for Irish Studies (KU Leuven/LCIS), and Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg/Irish Studies Würzburg (JMU/ISWÜ) – in three European countries – Ireland, Belgium, and Germany. The contributors explore Irish ‘history in stories'from the vantage point of their national and disciplinary contexts, emphasizing cultural knowledge and historical lessons to be drawn from ‘texts'from and about the Irish past.

During the interwar years in France, modernist literature challenged norms around sex and sexuality through daring portrayals of homosexuality and queerness. The same moment, however, witnessed the crystallization of the Western gender binary and its stark lines of division between male and female. Bringing together trans theory with French literary studies, Mat Fournier offers a new understanding of how the gender binary emerged in the modernist era.Dysphoric Modernism considers gender deviance in works by a broad range of French authors, both writers who are canonical for queer theory, such as Marcel Proust, André Gide, Jean Genet, and Colette, and lesser-known figures, including René Crevel, Raymond Radiguet, Maurice Sachs, and Maurice Rostand. Its trans readings track the dysphoria inherent to modern gender and the many ways these texts both disrupt and reinforce it. Examining the complex entanglements of gender and sexuality with the colonial project, Fournier argues that modernist writers'representations of sexual dissidence came at the cost of their enforcement of racial and gendered discrimination. A groundbreaking transgender analysis of French modernist literature, this book also demonstrates the significance of the concept of dysphoria for a number of fields.

The study focuses on spatio-temporal relations and their dependence on literary genres in Paul Auster's fiction. The author examines how selected novels reflect and redefine both the representation of space and formulaic patterns of genres they can be categorised as. Semiotic spaces created by Auster share some common features, such as dislocation, diversity or incongruity. Read as the postmodern ones, they are remodellings of novelistic chronotopes defined by, for instance, the tradition of detective fiction or the road novel. As such, Auster's dialogue with tradition in terms of genre-specified features and models of space has led to the emergence of generic variants exhibiting tenets slightly or extensively altered in comparison to their predecessors.

This book presents an innovative, scientifically grounded interpretation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. It offers solutions to problems inherent in the text which have hitherto been ignored or inadequately addressed: problems relating to the flow of time, the phases of the moon, and the significance of April Fool's Day. The author, astrophysicist Peter Usher, pays careful attention to astronomical and chronological clues in the play, shedding new light on scenes that have long been a cause of confusion: Lancelot's riddling masque speech to Shylock, Antonio's melancholia, Portia's foreknowledge of the contents of a letter, and the ring subplot. The book builds on the author's long-running research on Shakespeare's knowledge of astronomy. It should appeal to students, teachers, actors, and all readers who have puzzled over this enigmatic play.

Marcel Proust once wrote, “There is no longer anybody, not even myself, since I cannot leave my bed, who will go along the Rue du Repos to visit the little Jewish cemetery where my grandfather, following a custom that he never understood, went for so many years to lay a stone on his parents'grave.” Investigating the origin and significance of this statement, Antoine Compagnon offers new insight into the great author's underappreciated Jewish side.Compagnon traces Proust's ties to the French Jewish community, examining his relations with his mother's successful and assimilated family, the Weils. He explores how French Jews read and responded to Proust's masterpiece In Search of Lost Time in the 1920s and 1930s. Challenging contemporary critics who perceive self-hatred or even antisemitism in Proust's work, Compagnon shows that many Jewish intellectuals and young Zionists admired and vigorously debated the novel, some seeing it as a source for pride in their Jewish identity. He also considers Proust's portrayal of homosexuality and how it relates to notions of Jewishness. A work of remarkable erudition and deep research, Proust, a Jewish Way brings to light the vanished world of Proust's first Jewish readers and shows how it can illuminate our reading of the great novelist today.

With few exceptions, the unsurpassable inequality between cultures on the literary field and in the imaginary Republic of Letters remains underemphasized and a more radical reconsideration is needed with regard to vernacular and peripheral forms of understanding cosmopolitan principles. The contributors voice insufficiently acknowledged cosmopolitan networks, frames, authorial positions, and cultural and literary practices, whose links to the nation-building process of Romanian literature are interwoven with their involvement in creating transnational routes and bridges. The book develops a systemic analysis of the legitimizing mechanisms and evolutionary paths by which semiperipheral literary cultures influence and transform the central ones, but also undermine the privileged position of the latter within the global literary field.

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expected to take place between Benjamin Fondane, Walter Benjamin, and Jean-Paul Sartre over their philosophical readings of Charles Baudelaire, an exchange preempted by the untimely deaths of two of the interlocutors during the Nazi holocaust. Why did three of Europe's sharpest minds respond to the terror of 1933-45 by writing about a long-dead poet? Aaron Brice Cummings argues that Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre turned to the poet of nihilism's abyss because they recognized a fact of cultural history that remains relevant today: until sometime in the 2080s, the literary world will have to confront (even if to deny) the two-century window forecast by Nietzsche as the age of cultural and existential nihilism. Accordingly, the author examines the bitter metaphysics latent in Baudelaire's motifs of the abyss, clocks, brutes, streets, and bored dandies. In so doing, this book confronts the nothingness which modern life encounters in the heart of art, ethics, ideality, time, memory, history, urban life, and religion.

Este volumen aglutina diferentes perspectivas críticas del tratamiento del género en los libros destinados a niñas, niños y adolescentes. Los estudios desafían los roles y estereotipos de género en la literatura infantil y juvenil a través de una mirada poliédrica que abarca diversas perspectivas y voces, y que va más allá de las simples nociones binarias de masculino y femenino. Se aborda la influencia de las narrativas en la construcción de identidades, la igualdad, la diversidad y la inclusión. El objetivo es analizar el impacto de la literatura infantil y juvenil en la construcción de una sociedad más igualitaria que ofrezca modelos de género alternativos, reflejo de un mundo multicultural y en constante evolución. Las contribuciones se fundamentan en análisis teóricos apoyados por una amplia selección de obras literarias y cinematográficas que conforman propuestas transformadoras sobre el rol esencial de la literatura infantil y juvenil en el empoderamiento de la juventud.

Based on the analytical framework of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ernest Becker, Controlling Animals makes use of the notion of the heroic ideal to exposedysfunctional attempts at immortality through the interpretation of three works of fiction. In this work, the author demonstrates to readers the flawed pursuit of attempting to avert death through the subjugation of animals. This pursuit is often orchestrated under the guise of the biblical concept of dominion from the Book of Genesis. In short, readers will gain a deeper understanding of the inextricable bond to the natural world and the fragile and tenuous existence in which humans live. The text also underscores the impending need for humans to make meaningful choices that are useful to the world while maintaining respect and deference to their animal co-inhabitants.

The book is the first academic study of Henry Beissel's bilingual poetic autobiography. The Canadian poet going back through memories to his childhood in Nazi Germany, wrote a long poem in English and reinterpreted it in German – his mother tongue, neglected for decades. The study offers a comparative reading of the two distinctly different versions of the poem, juxtaposing various perspectives, voices and recollections. Beissel's bilingual project is depicted as'memory workshop', that mediates between cultures. The work examines Beissel's biography and the theories of memory, autobiography and bilingualism. It refers to metafiction, the poetic child's figure and writing trauma, as well as explores poetic complexities of memory and identity.

This is the first study to examine the intersections of Indigenous scholarship, theories of New Materialism and Native American fiction regarding the Anthropocene future. The book discusses selected speculative fiction novels by North American Indigenous female writers such as Zainab Amadahy, Rebecca Roanhorse, Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, Cherie Dimaline and Louise Erdrich. They offer a distinctive contribution to the emerging trend in Native American literature called Indigenous futurisms. The writers challenge established paradigms of science fiction genre by presenting alternative worlds where Indigenous people are heroes and Native knowledge means power. The book discusses how academic theory and selected Indigenous speculative fiction address the possibilities for more complex conceptions of the materiality of human bodies and the more-than-human world.

This ambitious study of all proper names in the Chanson de Roland is based for the first time on a systematic survey of the whole geographical and historical literature from antiquity to after 1100 for the Geographica, and on working through (almost) the entire documentary tradition of France and its neighbouring regions from 778 to the early 12th century for the personal names. The overall result is clear: the surviving song is more tightly and profoundly structured, even in smaller scenes, than generally assumed, it is also richer in depicting reality, and it has a very long prehistory, which can be traced in outline, albeit with decreasing certainty, (almost) back to the Frankish defeat of 778. Here are some individual results: for the first time, a detailed (and ultimately simple!) explanation not only of the ‘pagan'catalogue of peoples, but also of the overarching structure of Baligant's empire, the organisation of North Africa, the corpus of the Twelve Anti-Pairs as well as the ‘pagan'gods are given, and individual names such as Bramimunde and Jurfaret, toponyms such as Marbrise and Marbrose are explained. From Roland's Spanish conquests (v. 196–200), the course of the elapsed set anz toz pleins is reconstructed. Even the names of the weapons prove to be a small structured group, in that they are very discreetly adapted to their respective ‘pagan'or Christian owner. On the Christian side, the small list of relics in Roland's sword is also carefully devised, not least in what is left out: a relic of the Lord; this is reserved for Charlemagne's Joiuse. The author explains for example, why from the archangel triad only Michael and Gabriel descend to the dying Roland, whereas ‘the'angel Cherubin descends in Rafael's place. Munjoie requires extensive discussion, because here a (hitherto insufficiently recorded) toponym has been secondarily charged by the poet with traditional theological associations. The term Ter(e) major is attested for the first time in reality, namely in the late 11th century in Norman usage. For the core of France, the fourth cornerstone – along with Besançon, Wissant and Mont-Saint-Michel – is Xanten, and its centre is Aachen. The poet's artful equilibration of Charles's ten eschieles and their leaders is traced. The'Capetian barrier'emerges as a basic fact of epic geography. Approximatively, the last quarter of the study is devoted to the prehistory of the song, going backwards in time: still quite clearly visible is an Angevin Song of Roland from around 1050, in which Marsilĭe, Olivier, Roland, Ganelon, Turpin and Naimes already have roles similar to those in the preserved Song. Behind it, between about 970 and shortly after 1000, is the Girart de Vienne from the Middle Rhône, already recognised by Aebischer, with the newly invented Olivier contra Roland. Finally, in faint outlines, an oldest attainable, also Middle Rhône adaptation of the Roland material from shortly after 870 emerges. For the Chanson de Roland, Gaston Paris and Joseph Bédier were thus each right on the main point that was close to their hearts: the surviving song has both the thoroughly sophisticated structure of great art that Bédier recognised in it, and the imposingly long prehistory that Paris conjectured.

L'Etranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus is one of the most read twentieth-century novels and is studied around the world. This workbook provides students with tools that are essential to read and study L'Etranger in its original French language. Formulated for advanced reading levels, this book includes a chapter-by-chapter study of L'Etranger along with 220 vocabulary, grammar and comprehension activities that incorporate strategies to support various learning needs and styles. Biographical and historical contexts are also included, as well as the outlines of Camus'philosophy in relation to the novel.

The focus of this study in comparative criticism is close analysis of Dostoevsky's first literary publication—his 1844 translation of the first edition of Balzac's Eugе́nie Grandet (1834)—and the stylistic choices that he made as a young writer while working on Balzac's novel. Through the prism of close reading, the author analyzes Dostoevsky's literary debut in the context of his future mature aesthetic style and poetics. Comparing the original and the translation side by side, this book focuses on the omissions, additions and substitutions that Dostoevsky brought into the text. It demonstrates how young Dostoevsky's free translation of Eugénie Grandet predicts the creation of his own literary characters, themes, and other aspects of his literary output that are now recognized as Dostoevsky's signature style. It investigates the changes that Dostoevsky made while working on Balzac's text and analyzes the complex transplantation of Balzac's imagery, motifs, and character portraiture from Eugénie Grandet into Dostoevsky's own writing later on.

This book addresses a research gap in the study of eugenics in fictional literature: the analysis of the nexus of eugenics and genetics in 21st-century novels, detached from their authors'ideological beliefs. It is based on an understanding of literature as an interdiscourse in Jürgen Link‘s sense. The study employs categories developed by Rabinow and Rose in the context of Foucault‘s concept of “biopower.” It thereby demonstrates that, though officially fallen from grace in light of the Nazi atrocities committed in the name of racial hygiene, eugenic ideas remain surprisingly resilient in the sciences as well as in fiction. Thus, the nexus between eugenics and genetics continues to serve as an important force in the structuring of scientific and contemporary popular (inter-)discourses.

The study of self-realization as a primary literary theme covers a wide range of literature. The journey to self-discovery can be represented in many different forms, from novels of development to social criticism and to historical plays. It can provide the core of a basic literary form, such as a fairytale and the decision on crossroads of life. The self as a primary literary element can be identified as an axis of symmetry, similar to a central section of a wheel, which connects to all related themes. The description of space, setting, time, historical moment, and heritage shape all documentation of self-orientation. Thematic developments highlight specific appropriate locations for the unfolding story. By comparing works from different periods and examining manifestations of the theme in American, French, English, and German literature, this study traces the theme of self-realization in the coming-of-age constellation, the acceptance and the criticism of existing social conditions, the attempts to comprehend the past and the current historical conditions, and in utopian visions of the future. While literature has provided singular and unforgettable portraits of figures in works ranging from Bellow, Dickens, Fontane, Goethe, Moliere, Schiller, Grass, and Raabe to Tolstoy or Trollope, it is equally apparent that primary forms of self-realization show a high correlation of recurring patterns. Some features associated with primary thematic emphasis and resolution occur with high frequency. Figures can be conceived of as being capable of intellectual and spiritual growth. Alternately, in a moment of insight, they may persevere in their errors in judgment, the frailty of institutions, or a web of circumstances that impeded their optimal development. In such instances, the action is usually designed to convey a vision of human potential to the reader—and furthermore, raise serious questions about the apparent predetermination of existence.

Este volumen reúne trece artículos firmados por investigadores del ámbito de las literaturas ibéricas, procedentes de distintas universidades del Estado Español y de los Estados Unidos. Todos ellos se centran en la literatura del escritor vasco Kirmen Uribe, cuya obra goza de un considerable impacto internacional, ya que ha sido ampliamente traducida. Se trata de la primera obra colectiva dedicada al estudio del trabajo literario de Uribe, y, a pesar de que su novelística sea el principal objeto de análisis de los artículos que contiene este volumen, también se incluyen trabajos que versan sobre sus libros de poesía, la literatura infantil y juvenil o estudios más generales sobre la poética del escritor. El compendio de artículos se inaugura con un interesante texto de Uribe, titulado'Manual de desobediencia', donde explica su actitud en torno al propio quehacer literario y los principios que han regido su andadura hasta el momento.

Die vorliegende Untersuchung basiert auf der Relation zwischen Architektur und Literatur. Im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung befindet sich das Syntagma ‚gotische Architektur‘ und deren Rezeption in der russischen Literatur. Der begriffsgeschichtlichen Herangehensweise annähernd stütz sich der Diskurs auf einen Textkorpus, dessen Bestandteile zwischen 1700 und dem Anfang des 20. Jh. entstanden. Die literarischen Werke wurden nach dem semantischen Wandel und der Funktion der ‚gotischen‘ Bauten befragt. Mithilfe kunsthistorischer Aspekte und eines vielschichtigen Ideen- bzw. Metaphergehalts zeigte sich, dass Begriffe komplexe Inhalte und weitreichende Interpretation in sich tragen können.

Comment redonner un sens au mot humanisme? Diese Frage, die Jean Beaufret 1946 Martin Heidegger stellte, verdeutlicht die Krise des Humanismusbegriffs in der Nachkriegszeit. Am Beispiel der französischen und spanischen Gattungen von Utopie und Tragödie soll gezeigt werden, wie diese Frage beantwortet wurde.

Comment allier inspiration, tradition, culture et invention, d'un côté, et grain de jouissance, Réel, rature et manuscrit, de l'autre. La roue de l'écriture, machine inventée par l'auteur, aide à comprendre les rapports entre ces concepts à partir de l'étude des manuscrits. L'homme, écrivain ou artiste, reste le centre, mais plus assujetti que sujet, plus ouvert aux découvertes qu'organisateur. L'écrivain se sentant, comme l'OEdipe de Bauchau, artiste et suppliant par rapport à la langue choisie et non plus régent d'une écriture instrumentale, scripteur enfin pour devenir auteur. C'est ce que l'auteur met en pratique, utilisant les théories littéraire et psychanalytique pour étudier manuscrits de Marcel Proust et d'Henry Bauchau.

Der Band möchte an die Relevanz von Lehrerfiguren für die europäische Literatur seit der Antike am Beispiel der deutschen Literatur erinnern. Seine Beiträge setzen im Mittelalter ein und führen über Frühe Neuzeit und Moderne bis in die Gegenwart. Dabei zeigt sich nicht nur eine Fülle verschiedener Figurationen des Lehrers (die Enden des Spektrums sind mit dem Heiligen Geist auf der einen und dem Teufel auf der anderen Seite markiert, in der Mitte stehen Vögel als animalische Lehrerfiguren), deutlich wird auch, wie unterschiedlich die Gattungszusammenhänge sind, in denen sie auftauchen, und ebenso die Funktionen, die sie haben.

Die „Istorija stanovlenija samosoznajuščej duši'ist das kulturphilosophische Hauptwerk von Andrej Belyj. Es ist bislang nur in Auszügen publiziert und wird hier erstmals auf der Grundlage des vollständigen Manuskripts erschlossen. Sein Leitbegriff – die Selbstbewusstseinsseele – bildet zugleich seinen Gegenstand und seine Methode. In ihm sind Belyjs späte Erkenntnistheorie und Poetologie zusammengefasst. Diese bestimmen die Gestalt des Textes, dessen Sinnschichten durch eine „autoreferentielle Hermeneutik'erschlossen werden. Neben Anregungen aus der Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners hat Belyj Ideen der russischen Historiosophie aufgegriffen und zu einer originellen Synthese verarbeitet. Mit der Charakterisierung des Spätwerks als „hermetischer Symbolismus'soll ein neues Paradigma geprägt werden.

Écrivaine inclassable, Hélène Cixous offre une écriture dont les grands thèmes – le père mort, le pays perdu et la mère étrangère –, aux fortes résonances autobiographiques, s'affirment continuellement tout en multipliant les échos poétiques et philosophiques. La question de l'origine, à la fois singulière et plurielle, donne lieu à une écriture-pensée d'une subjectivité qui montre ses enracinements, revisite les lieux et les liens, mais (se) défait aussi des mythes de l'origine. Ce volume se propose d'étudier les marqueurs de la féminité, de l'« algériance » et de la judéité comme les principaux lieux d'interrogation de l'origine, auxquels s'ajoutent la filiation allemande mise en lumière dans les textes les plus récents, Gare d'Osnabrück à Jérusalem et Une autobiographie allemande. Le volume ouvre par un inédit d'Hélène Cixous, « Un legs empoisonné ». Hélène Cixous offers us an unclassifiable oeuvre, the main themes of which - the dead father, the lost country and the foreign mother -, all autobiographically inspired, assert themselves as such while offering the reader continuously new poetical and philosophical insights. The question of origin, either singular or multiple, gives rise to an écriture-pensée of a subjectivity which shows its roots, revisits places and relationships, but also breaks down myths of origin. This collection of essays proposes to study the markers of femininity, “algériance”, Jewishness and, as expressed in Cixous'latest works of fiction, the German filiation, as the main places of questioning origin. “Un legs empoisonné”, an unpublished text by Hélène Cixous, opens the collection.

La problématique de l'interprétation, entendue comme un processus dynamique de la lecture ou comme une réception créative de la production verbale de l'homme, intéresse depuis des décennies toute science concentrée sur la langue et la culture, surtout la linguistique et la recherche en littérature. Le présent ouvrage recueille des textes qui abordent la problématique éponyme sous des angles différents, employant des outils méthodologiques variés, propres aussi bien à la linguistique qu'à la recherche en littérature, à la didactique ou à l'analyse sémiotique au sens large. Cette panoplie d'approches témoigne de ce que le terme d'interprétation lui-même se laisse soumettre à une interprétation multiple – multiple au sens positif, impliquant une diversité d'acceptions créative.

In seinen Romanen Die Jüdin von Toledo (1955) und Goya oder Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1951) zeigte Lion Feuchtwanger während seines kalifornischen Exils eine ausgeprägte Neigung zu Spanien. Diese Neigung zeigten auch andere der vielen Schriftsteller, die im Dritten Reich gezwungen waren, Deutschland zu verlassen, manchmal über Spanien. Im Gegensatz zum Italienbild wurde das Spanienbild in den Texten einiger der exilierten Schriftsteller nie ästhetisiert. Stoffe aus der spanischen Geschichte boten den Autoren aber die Gelegenheit, die damalige Gegenwart durch eine schon vorgegebene Vergangenheit zu interpretieren, was ihre Vorliebe für den historischen Roman erklärt. In den letzten Jahren hat die Gattung eine Wiederbelebung erfahren, die bereits auf eine Rückkehr von vielen im Exil geschriebenen Werken hindeutet. Die politische und soziale Lage, die in vielen Ländern der Welt zum Alltag geworden ist, bestätigt die Aktualität von Romanen wie Feuchtwangers Die Jüdin von Toledo. In diesem Sinne widmet sich diese Publikation in ihrem ersten Teil Lion Feuchtwangers schriftstellerischer Auseinandersetzung mit Spanien. Der zweite Teil befasst sich mit dem Spanienbild vieler Schriftsteller, die in Spanien nicht nur einen Zufluchtsort, sondern auch Inspiration für ihre eigenen Werke gefunden haben.

Quintilians Ruhm – im ersten Jahrhundert unserer Zeitrechnung aufgebaut –, sein Ruf als Lehrer, Denker und Gelehrter sind nie verblaßt; seine Institutio oratoria verharrte als sichtbarer Meilenstein und Zeuge in der memoria der Rhetorik, und der Verfasser fand als Kenner der Materie selbst noch am Hofe des Sonnenkönigs in Versailles hohe Beachtung und würdiges Lob. Friedrich der Große rief im 18. Jahrhundert eindringlich zum Studium der Institutio an höheren Schulen auf. Die bildungsgeschichtliche Leistung Quintilians ist beachtlich, und sie ist trotzdem kaum bekannt, denn die Institutio wird außerhalb von Fachzirkeln der Redekunst selten zu Rate gezogen. Neuere Kunst- oder Künstlergeschichten gingen mit staunenswerter Achtlosigkeit an ihr vorbei – und so entgingen der Forschung mögliche Quellen und Anregungen sowie grundlegende Impulse für weitergehende Einsichten. Den Auswirkungen Quintilians wird vor allem im Libro dell'Arte des Cennino Cennini (um 1400) nachgegangen. Der aus der Toskana stammende Maler übernahm aus der spätantiken Quelle vor allem die Wegweisungen zu einem gesunden, geordneten und moralisch einwandfreien Lebenswandel.

Thomas Mann's novel Der Zauberberg (1913–1924) illustrates a change in the author's conceptions of life, death, disease and Eros following World War I. Set in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium, the novel's main protagonist, Hans Castorp, comes into contact with three pedagogic figures who each represent a different attitude towards these themes. The humanist Settembrini, for example, affirms life but is repulsed by Eros, disease and death; the Jesuit ascetic Naphta glorifies erotic suffering and death while denying life; and the coffee magnate Peeperkorn celebrates life and Eros – yet to a pathological extent. This book relies on intertextual theory to examine the relation of these conceptions of life, death, disease and Eros within the novel to the thought of Novalis, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Exploring the dialogic clash of their conceptions together with the sociological implications of their work, this author investigates how the relationships between Der Zauberberg and the intertexts influence the reader's interpretation of the nature of life, death, disease and Eros as well as the effect they have on the culture depicted in the novel.

Ein Vierteljahrhundert nach den demokratischen Transformationen in Mittel- und Osteuropa ziehen polnische, österreichische, deutsche, ungarische und tschechische Literaturforscher eine Zwischenbilanz über die Bedeutung dieser politischen, sozialen und kulturellen Veränderungen für die mitteleuropäische Literaturlandschaft. Die in diesem Band versammelten Stimmen gehen der Fragestellung aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven nach: Sie ergründen sowohl die Folgen der «Wende» für das Literaturschaffen (neue poetische Verfahrensweisen und Gattungen, neue Themenbereiche, neue Identitätsentwürfe) als auch die Thematisierungen der «Wende» in den Werken der SchriftstellerInnen aus Mittel- und Osteuropa sowie der ehemaligen DDR.

Giovanni Arpino (1927–1987) bezeichnete sein Schreiben als «ricerca dell'umano», als eine «Erforschung des Menschlichen». Im Vordergrund steht dabei, was eine Figur fühlt und denkt. Diese Selbsteinschätzung des bisher kaum erforschten Autors fungiert als Lektüreschlüssel der Studie, die eine textnahe Funktions- und Darstellungsanalyse der in ausgewählten Romanen dargestellten Emotionen und Selbstreflexionen vornimmt. Die Verfasserin zeigt die handlungsgenerierende, subjektkonstituierende und identitätsstiftende Funktion von Emotionen, die sich in selbstreflexiven Prozessen abbildet. Emotionen und Selbstreflexionen dienen der Erstellung eines Psycho- und Soziogramms; perspektivierendes Erzählen und Sprachbilder ergänzen sich dabei auf Darstellungsebene gegenseitig.