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This thesis examines the presence of German author Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) in the works of the anglophone authors John Banville (b. 1945) and David Constantine (b. 1944). Presenting analysis of translations, adaptations and works from the wider oeuvres of the English-speaking authors, the thesis identifies aspects of theme and style in their texts that have arguably been influenced by their engagement with Kleist. Additional insight is provided by an interview with each anglophone author. The analysis allows the thesis to explore the wide-ranging implications of Kleist's presence in the oeuvres of Banville and Constantine. In this way the thesis aims to demonstrate that, with regard to Banville and Constantine, Kleist has a more significant presence in the anglophone literary scene than may have been widely acknowledged. Finally, the thesis discusses the disparate attitudes demonstrated by Banville and Constantine towards translation and intertextuality.

The study is an investigation of responses to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in German and English language literary and cinematic fictions. These fictions extend a critique of modernity implicit in Conrad's critique of colonialism. Through comparative Anglo-German literary and film analysis, the study intervenes in the ongoing debate about postcolonialism as "the restrospective re-phrasing of Modernity within the framework of 'globalisation'" (Hall 1996). Involving 'the imperial regulation of land, the discipline of the soul, and the creation of truth" (Turner 1990), modernity is significant in colonial discourse as it separates colonizing and colonized cultures as 'modern' and 'pre-modern'. The thesis starts by mapping historical and theoretical context, followed by a rereading of Conrad's novella as a critique of both colonialism and modernity. The third part deals with case studies of post-1960s literary and cinematic sources responding to Conrad while also casting their postcolonial critique as a critique of modernity.

Racialised inequality has existed in South Africa since the arrival of the first settlers, so that the shadow of illegitimacy has fallen upon successive governments and ruling classes. Along with changing political and material contexts, claims to legitimacy have been altered and reformulated. This thesis argues that these discourses have been instrumental to the development of the novel in South Africa, and that representations of totality and history have necessarily sought to support, critique or reformulate these discourses. Two decades after apartheid, South Africa remains a profoundly unequal society. Therefore the scope of this thesis spans the years from the 1940s to the 2000s, using historical-contextual and close reading to determine how specific novels have registered and responded to drives to counter, justify or legitimate the power of a small ruling class. Discourses of legitimacy have travelled under various guises - from sexuality and white supremacy, to paternalist hierarchies, internecine cultural rivalries, claims of popular consent, pragmatism and depoliticisation and the collapse of class into racial difference. By focusing on these I attempt to historicise formal questions about the South African novel, like the prominence of didacticism and difficulties of representing spontaneity. I argue that an individualized and identity-based moralism about racism has been shaped by class interests - and that this has led to an equivalent blindness to the historically specific character of race and racism in South African prose narrative. In this vein, each chapter offers a close reading which challenges orthodox readings by highlighting the salience of class and legitimacy. Readings are offered of the work of Sarah Gertrude Millin, in terms of cultural rivalries between English-speakers and Afrikaners at the dawn of apartheid; of Nadine Gordimer's Late Bourgeois World, in terms of 1960s' repression and dissent; and of John Miles's Kroniek uit die doofpot, in terms of late apartheid's purportedly "non-ideological" emphasis on pragmatism and technocracy. The thesis also departs from the ruling party's discourse to consider the way in which legitimacy was constructed by antiapartheid Nationalist movements. Thus, novelistic depictions of the 1976 Soweto Uprising by Miriam Tlali, Mbulelo Mzamane, Sipho Sepamla and Mongane Serote, prefigure the class divisions and tensions in contemporary South Africa. It concludes with a consideration of Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit and Zoë Wicomb's Playing in the Light, fictions in which postapartheid discourses and the construction of a heroic nationalist narrative are read against continuing inequality, class immobility and the troubled legitimacy of the national elite.

This thesis explores the multiple senses of scepticism in Nietzsche's middle writings, arguing that starting from Human, All Too Human Nietzsche becomes a sceptic, albeit of an idiosyncratic kind, for he consistently defines the task of his developing philosophical projects in alliance with various sceptical practices, which he selects, appropriates, and transforms from both ancient and modern traditions for his philosophical ends. There are two major failings in the secondary literature on Nietzsche and scepticism. First, commentators have largely neglected the importance that scepticism assumes in Nietzsche's middle writings. Second, they have frequently overlooked the plurality of senses or forms that scepticism takes in these writings, as well as their roles in Nietzsche's philosophical projects. In contrast, this thesis is intended to show how and why Nietzsche becomes a sceptic in the turn from his early writings to Human, All Too Human; to appreciate the multiple senses of scepticism and of sceptical practice, especially in his middle writings; and to illuminate the essential roles that various forms of scepticism play in his middle philosophy. First and foremost, then, this work is an attempt to make sense of Nietzsche as a sceptic and of his multifarious sceptical practice. Its main contention is that appreciating the senses of scepticism in Nietzsche's writings is of key importance for an understanding of Nietzsche's identity - or identities - as a philosopher.

This thesis investigates Goth culture (in the widest sense, including Post-Punk, New Wave and New Romantic scenes, genres and styles) in the GDR between 1983 and 1989/1990 from state and participants perspectives. Drawing on the major works within Gothic, subculture, and postmodern theory, this thesis explores the 'subcultural capital' of the pluriform, multi-scene East German Goth culture in official state documents and in 'subcultural micro-media' to answer the key question how Goth scenes were represented by different participants and political actors. Participants are considered as agents whose 'spectacular style' brought them in conflict with society and authority, and who performed different politics of representation which varied between self-marginalisation and demystification, and between isolation and 'liberalisation through negotiation'. The thesis explores the uniqueness of East German Goth(ic) while considering it as a transnational phenomenon in the Cold War Zeitgeist of the 1980s. The 'local boundedness' made East German Goth develop both similarly and differently compared to Goth scenes in the West. The study demonstrates that symbolic representations of Goth contain sets of social and political relationships and practices as well as existential conflicts, strategies, and solutions. It will on the one side be shown how social groups which are considered 'Goth' produced meaning, identity, and 'ideology'. On the other side, it will be shown that the state applied the principle of homology and semiological method to understand subcultural phenomena and what the results of this were. The overarching question of this study is dual: How is Gothic culture and how are participants in Gothic culture represented in the individual interpretations and translations of 'Gothic' in micro-media produced by participants, and how is Gothic culture and how are participants in Gothic culture represented in official state documents and embedded in the political-ideological narrative and terminology? The dual perspectivity gives insights into what is referred to in this thesis as 'Post-Punk transition' in subcultural 'texts', and 'Post-Punk confusion' in state theory. It will be shown in this thesis how Punk evolved into Goth, what marks this transition in the subcultural micro-media, and how this transition is reflected in official state documentation. The thesis also shows that within both perspectives, there are difference and ambivalence. The representations of Goth in the GDR are an ideal case study to explore how subcultural identities and meanings are constructed through language and rhetoric, and that definitions of 'subculture' and 'Goth' are fluid and subject to time and space.

This comparative study investigates representations of objects and materiality in the late modernism of Samuel Beckett and W.G. Sebald. The thesis responds to the recent proliferation of theories and literary analyses focused on objects, matter, and the nonhuman (such as "new materialisms" and "thing theory"), and specifically to what is arguably their unifying premise: the call for a "politics of materiality." It argues that Beckett and Sebald's works are defined by leftover things and material remainders, which express a negative, indeterminate quality that problematizes affirmative systems of relations and the recuperation of "matter" into narrative meaning. What their oeuvres share is a sense of historical belatedness and material depletion, tied to the European post-war moment and a mutual concern for issues of remembrance and recovery. Within this context, their aesthetic response to a history of violence is in conversation with both realist and modernist object categories, and poses a series of specific difficulties to object-oriented perspectives and the notion of a "politics of materiality." Their works foreground the materiality of language, intensifying the inadequacy of mediation not just for the representation of things, but for any encounter with them. Regarding the respective author fields, the thesis contends that the focus on materiality encourages a critical reformulation of the problem of politics and history, a problem that persists through their work's resistance towards systematisation, determination and resolution. It posits that a conception of "thingness" in their work expresses neither truth, essence, nor an ideal object, but rather a limit encounter that asks for a continual revision of historical and political signification. The thesis contributes to the recent critical recognition of a latent political potential in Beckett's work, and disputes claims that Sebald's novels encourage melancholic resignation in the face of catastrophe.

In recent decades there has been an interest in adaptations of the Bildungsroman in feminist, postcolonial and diasporic writing, challenging the genre's traditional constructions as a quintessentially 'German' genre or socially conservative canonical literature. Continuing these trends in research, this thesis examines how the Bildungsroman is used and reworked in German-language migration, diasporic and postcolonial novels which feature intercultural contexts. It also explores the new stories of personal development and cultural identity told in those texts which choose not to engage with genre traditions or even actively subvert them. The five novels analysed differ in terms of time and setting, ranging from modern-day migration and diasporic experiences to historical colonial settings. They also vary in their use of genre patterns, offering affirmative adaptations of canonical Bildungsromane (Alev Tekinay's neoromantic novel Der weinende Granatapfel, 1990) as well as critical revisions of the genre's idealist foundations (Sherko Fatah's post-colonial novel Ein weißes Land, 2011). Other novels eschew the genre traditions of the Bildungsroman in favor of formal and thematic innovations. While Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (1998) ironically subverts genre patterns, despite being termed an 'intercultural' Bildungsroman in literary criticism (Gutjahr, 2008), Yadé Kara's novel Selam Berlin (2003) can be productively compared to post-colonial 'novels of transformation' (Stein, 2004) in British literature, which highlight social transformations alongside personal ones. Ilija Trojanow's novel Der Weltensammler (2006) does not provide a coherent, unambiguous narrative of development, but employs a range of narrative strategies to engage the readers' ability to confront and question their cultural biases, involving them in a process of intercultural education. Finally, the conclusion provides an overview of the novels' innovative aspects, i.e. their tendency to frame personal development as a specifically cross-cultural process as well as their thematic focus on cultural change.

This thesis investigates the ways in which contemporary German literature and posthumanist theory respond to major socio-cultural and technological shifts since the beginning of the 21st century. These changes, which include the digitisation of all spheres of life, the introduction of Artificial Intelligences - but also new reproduction techniques - are transforming our conceptions and constructions of society, simultaneously de-centring traditional notions of subjectivity as they have been developed in Western philosophical thought. I argue that the recently emerging field of posthumanist theory and its different sub-strands, which evolved as reactions to these transformative movements, are only half-sufficient when it comes to tackling the issue of developing new forms of collectivity and subjectivity, since they often remain indebted to a deeply Humanistic, and therefore anthropocentric, worldview. I therefore suggest to bringing recent posthumanist theory together with the already established theoretical field of Critical Theory (in the tradition of the Frankfurt School), as this enables a critical engagement with the legacy of Humanism and of the Enlightenment drawing attention to its complicity with structural forms of violence, injustice and inequality. I then use this recalibrated theoretical framework to explore German contemporary literature through a range of authors who deploy tropes and narratives from the Science Fiction genre and depict societies that in some form or shape transcend human(ist) subjectivity as we know it. Through close readings of three major texts by Dietmar Dath, Reinhard Jirgl and Leif Randt, I interrogate these respective authors' conceptions and constructions of a potentially posthumanist society and a posthumanist subjectivity. I focus in particular on the potential of art in these texts, exploring the extent to which the artwork might contribute toward a renegotiation of contemporary society and subjectivity. By initiating a dialogue between the realms of contemporary theory and fiction, this thesis engages with key texts from contemporary German Science Fiction, while also critically investigating key paradigms in the newly developing field of posthumanist theory.

This thesis investigates representations of the Holocaust and the Second World War across a range of German- and Austrian-Jewish writers who belong to the second or third generation born after the Holocaust. These writers relate to the events from the position of the “nonwitness” (Weissman 2004), and in the face of major shifts in Holocaust memory since the millennium: the disappearance of the survivor and eyewitness generation entails a transition from first-hand memories of the war period to an increasingly ritualised cultural memory of the events. This transformation intersects with larger changes in Holocaust memory in the last 15 years, such as the re- and hypermediation of Holocaust memory and the emergence of a globalised Erinnerungskultur. The Holocaust has therefore emerged as a highly discursivised “floating signifier” (Huyssen 2003), which travels transgenerationally, transmedially and transnationally. Engaging with these shifts, I argue that Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory” (Hirsch 1997) and recent trauma theory remain embedded in a biologising framework of analysis that views cultural transmission in terms of contagious inheritance. Drawing on cultural and literary theories and transnational memory studies, I develop a new approach that focuses on the Holocaust as a form of “travelling trauma” (Tomsky 2011), tracing its remediation and recycling across geographical, cultural, medial, and representational boundaries. My readings of texts by Benjamin Stein, Maxim Biller, Vladimir Vertlib, and Eva Menasse explore how these authors (re-)negotiate the various travels of Holocaust memory in the age of remediation. By initiating a dialogue between the realms of theory and contemporary fiction, this thesis engages with a broad body of recent German- and Austrian-Jewish Holocaust fiction, while at the same time critically investigating key paradigms in the field of memory and trauma studies.

This thesis investigates representations of “Muslim” women and girls in German popular culture 1990-2015. The thesis offers a symptomatic reading of three under-researched genres in the field: life writing, young adult literature and film. The figure of the “Muslim” woman or girl performs a crucial role in far-reaching socio-political debates in Germany. Indeed, such figures challenge the boundaries of “gender equality” and “secularism” and contest notions of “tolerance” and “integration”. The (in)visibility of “Muslim” women’s bodies and their apparent position in “Islam” function as ostensible indicators of their oppression and of “Islam’s” inherent incompatibility with “western” values. This study analyses the discursive function of such figures in German popular culture via three key research questions: what representational practices surround the figure of the “Muslim” woman or girl in German life writing, young adult literature and film? How do such representations function to produce “non-Muslim” subject positions? What is the function of this figure within narratives of feminism and assertions of “gender equality”? This study understands itself as an intervention into contemporary racist discourses in Germany and operates within a transdisciplinary framework of intersectional feminism, cultural and German studies. Ultimately, this thesis aims to make visible and interrogate the underlying hierarchies and agendas that drive representations of “Muslim” women and girls within the discourses studied.

An Introduction to the thesis presents a "Forschungsbericht" which summarises and discusses research to date. Both Heinrich von Beringen and Jacobus de Cessolis are introduced, and the German and Latin manuscripts used in the production of the texts are described. The text of Heinrich von Beringen's "Schachbuch" edited from manu-script Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet. et phil. 4o Nr. 25 follows: Part 1 (the poet's introduction to his text), Part 2 (the noble chess-pieces), Part 3 (the pawns) and Part 4 (the moves in the game of chess). This is accompanied by readings from manuscript London, British Library, Additional Manuscript 24946 and in Part 3 by a Latin parallel text from Bloomington (Indiana), Lilly Library, Indiana University, Ricketts 194 (or from Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Lat 169 where the Bloomington text fails). Endnotes relating to the text have been added. Appendix I correlates verses in the Stuttgart and London manuscripts, and Appendix II presents an up-to-date list (with references) of extant manuscripts of the "Liber de ludo scaccorum".

The thesis explores important similarities and differences between responses to bourgeois society in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924) and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). It examines these texts’ presentations of the shifting morality of bourgeois culture, the prevailing sense of paralysis and fragmentation at the beginning of the twentieth century, and compares the authors’ use of allusions to myth, and their explorations of concepts of time. However, by considering the ambivalent responses to bourgeois society as they are presented within these texts, and a selection of Mann and Eliot’s other creative and critical works, the thesis also highlights significant differences in the authors’ responses to bourgeois society, which are indicative of the broader divergent traditions in which they positioned themselves. Eliot subscribes to a tradition based upon the framework of the Christian faith, and the classical literary canon, with an ‘impersonal’ approach to artistic creation. By contrast, Mann places the German ‘burgher’ at the core of the tradition to which he subscribes, emphasising personality, and favouring a humanistic approach, which values the individual’s capacity for ethical judgement based on reason. This framework demonstrates that the thematic similarities and common allusions in Mann and Eliot’s creative works are underscored by radically different authorial approaches and belief systems.

This study explores how education and the medieval intellectual and pedagogical discipline of 'grammatical' developed in Iceland during the medieval period, defined roughly from the official conversion to Christianity c.1000 to the Reformation c.1550, The first chapter deals with social, institutional, and financial aspects of teaching and learning in medieval Iceland, surveying key figures and places, but also arguing that more attention shoulder be paid to the costs of learning and the effect of that on poor students. The second chapter addresses Latin education, discussing the importance of Latinity in medieval Iceland and the types of education that would involve Latin. It also addresses the idea of bilingual education and suggests ways in which extant venacular writings can provide evidence for how Latin was taught and learned using the vernacular, using the model of Old English bilingual education. Finally, the third chapter addresses vernacular topics of learning, focusing on the development of a venacular \(grammatical\) which is focused on the interpretation and normalization of Old Norse texts, rather than the understanding and use of Latin. Discussing these three components of educational history together is fundamental to understanding the intellectual and pedagogical dynamics behind the extant medieval Icelandic textual corpus.

‘The Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Carlyle’s French Revolution’ examines the work of Thomas Carlyle as a crucial aesthetic intervention in the modern reception of the French Revolution in Europe. It interrogates the prevalent critical constructions of Carlyle’s work and finds them to proceed predominantly from the Whig historical agenda, structured around such key nineteenth-century concepts as utilitarianism and civilisational and moral progress. Within this critical framework, Carlyle’s largely conservative cultural stance and Christian spirituality are hardly allowed any creative potential and, ever since the famous fabrication of James Anthony Froude who depicted Carlyle as ‘a Calvinist without the theology’, they have been perceived as artistically-stunted, irrational, and out of touch with the nineteenth-century political, social and cultural realities. In examining Carlyle’s involvement with German Romanticism on the one hand, and with contemporary British periodical press on the other, this thesis proposes a more comprehensive reading of Carlyle’s politics, aesthetics and spirituality in an attempt to represent his radically open, catholic and indeed cosmopolitan artistic agenda which taps into the Scottish Enlightenment concept of rationality, Calvinist scepticism towards nineteenth-century progressivism and acute perception of evil in this world, and post-Burkean Romantic aesthetics of the sublime. We chart the aesthetic movement from Carlyle’s early dialogue with Schiller and Goethe to ‘The Diamond Necklace’, Carlyle’s first artistic rendition of the French pre-revolutionary scene, delivered as a (Gothic) moral tale and anticipating The French Revolution (a historical work that uniquely employs the Gothic genre within historical narrative, arguably unparalleled in British post-Burkean Romanticism). The critical reception of The French Revolution in Britain is examined, with special attention paid to the highly unfavourable review by Herman Merivale in The Edinburgh Review, in order to challenge the Whig line in Carlylean criticism and to expose the fundamental artistic, political and moral disagreement between Carlyle and Merivale. Carlyle’s Calvinist stance sees both Merivale’s and Thomas Babington Macaulay’s facile exorcism of the categories of good and evil from their historical agendas as irrational given the recent French terror (which, in Carlyle’s reading, released its demons precisely through such a botched ethical deal). Similarly, I highlight Carlyle’s close dialogue with John Stuart Mill both in their correspondence, and in the publications in the London and Westminster Review, while I argue that this intellectual exchange is crucial for the reading of The French Revolution as a text challenging Mill’s utilitarianism, and written within the institutional framework of the contemporary periodical press. Finally, Carlyle is seen to make capital of the concepts of Gothic and sublime, introduced by Edmund Burke and popularised by the Anti-Jacobin Review in Britain, by applying them directly to the French mob in search of a new spiritual tongue for his times (a move that even a nineteenth-century radical liberal thinker such as Mill sees as politically, if not artistically, far too subversive and revolutionary). Creative non-conclusiveness and playful deconstruction of the prevalent post-revolutionary narratives of 1789 characterise Carlyle’s deeply spiritual and artistically-sophisticated text, which, in an orthodox Christian reading, rejoices in the messy, dark and complex residue of human history, through which Christian providence acts in mysterious and unexpected ways that do not allow for any simple, de-mythologised reading.

This thesis examines representations of space, place and landscape in English and German-language poetry of the period 1960-1975, a key transitional phase between modernity and postmodernity. It proposes that the impact certain transnational spatial revolutions had on contemporary poetry can only be fully grasped with recourse to comparative methodologies which look across national borders. This is demonstrated by a series of paired case studies which examine the work of J. H. Prynne and Paul Celan, Sarah Kirsch and Derek Mahon, and Ernst Jandl and Edwin Morgan. Prynne and Celan’s 'Sprachskepsis' is the starting point for a post-structuralist analysis of meta-textual space in their work, including how poetry’s complex tectonics addresses multifaceted crises of representation. Mahon and Kirsch’s work is read in the context of spatial division, and it is argued that both use representations of landscape, space and place to express political engagement, and to negotiate fraught ideas of home, community and world. Jandl and Morgan’s representations of space and place, which often depend on experimental lyric subjectivity, are examined: it is argued that poetic subject(s) which speak from multiple perspectives (or none) serve as a means of reconfiguring poetry’s relationship to space at a time when social, literary and political boundaries were being redefined. The thesis thus highlights hitherto underexplored connections between a range of poets working across the two language areas, making clear that space and place is a vital critical category for understanding poetry of this period, including both experimental and non-experimental work. It reveals weaknesses in existing critical taxonomies, arguing for the use of ‘late modernist’ as category with cross-cultural relevance, and promotes methodological exchange between the Anglophone and German traditions of landscape, space and place-oriented poetry scholarship, to the benefit of both.

This thesis examines the contributions of politically engaged writers to the West German peace movement in the final stages of the Cold War. The intensified arms race and related confrontations in the late 1970s and early 1980s were met with a similarly intensified reaction from peace movements in West Germany and beyond, supported by a variety of groups and individuals, including engaged writers. My thesis poses the question of how concepts of political, positional, and moral obligation defined and justified these writers’ public engagement in this period, and furthermore examines what distinct contributions these figures made to the wider West German peace movement based on these obligations. This analysis uses primary materials relating to a range of forms of writers’ engagement in this period, and explores both explicit and implicit forms of obligation supporting the roles and positions taken on by these figures. These include engaged writers’ direct contributions to protest actions, debates concerning the peace movement in the context of writers’ conferences, organisational involvement under the aegis of the Verband deutscher Schriftsteller, and literary engagement through poetry. Although not arguing that engaged writers singlehandedly led or defined peace protests in this period, my thesis demonstrates that these figures played a number of key contributory roles alongside the many other groups and individuals who made up the broader peace movement. These contributions were made with the support of engaged writers’ particular status and expertise, along with more general factors including their shared position as citizens alongside other protesters, with varied forms of obligation playing a key role in defining and justifying these forms of engagement.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and reconceive the scholarly understanding of one of Óðinn’s aspects – Óðinn as a patron to a mortal hero figure. This theme runs through a number of Old Icelandic and continental Scandinavian texts, but it is most widely represented in the fornaldarsaga genre. To formalise the discussion as well as the choice of material, the concept of the Odinic hero complex was introduced, which encompasses narrative structures, imagery and other material associated in the sagas with a protagonist helped and betrayed by Óðinn. This Odinic hero narrative has been looked at on the example of three fornaldarsǫgur, Vǫlsunga saga, Hrólfs saga kraka and Gautreks saga, as well as learned Latin texts connected to saga literature. The analysis also relied on the evidence of saga narratives that do not explicitly demonstrate the complete Odinic hero complex, but contains significant thematic parallelism to the main sources; these secondary sources included Hálfs saga ok hálfsrekka, Ǫrvar-Odds saga and Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks. The findings support the notion that a number of historians of religion have proposed, that there is a clear structural connection between the Odinic hero paradigm, initiation sequences and the themes of berserkir and shapeshifting. On the other hand, the dissertation shows that this thematic unity is in many cases a younger phenomenon than usually proposed, which leads to the necessity to re-evaluate a number of fornaldarsǫgur as sources on Old Scandinavian mythology and read them from a different perspective.

This thesis examines forms of autobiographical writing in the 21st century which are located at the intersection of autobiography and fiction. The literary sources selected question established genre boundaries, while also reflecting contemporary cultural discourses and creating particular images of their authors. My analysis investigates the new literary strategies emerging in Charlotte Roche’s Schoßgebete (2011), Stephan Wackwitz’s Ein unsichtbares Land (2003), Felicitas Hoppe’s Hoppe (2012) and David Wagner’s Leben (2012) in order to identify how texts such as these combine autobiography and fiction. Using a range of literary theories my textual analysis shows that autobiographical writing in the 21st century is more extensive than critical approaches such as ‘autofiction’ and ‘life writing’ suggest. The thesis demonstrates how genre hybridisations, intertextual combinations and inter-discursive conjunctions in the texts also move beyond Philippe Lejeune’s differentiation between autobiography and the novel. By combining characteristics of fictional narratives with features of factual texts such as the essay, the parody of academic biography or specifically context-related factual, in this case medical texts, these life stories reflect our understanding of identity in significantly new ways. Moreover, my investigation proves that the new forms of autobiographical writing engage with contemporary issues such as the role of the media and celebrity culture, national history and memory discourses, transculturalism and the significance of writing in the 21st century, medical developments and their consequences. The texts’ contribution to these discourses also constructs the authors’ self-presentation. Strategies and techniques identified range from provocative self-staging through positioning within a framework of national and family history, to outlining autobiographical poetics, or presenting different private and public facets of the author’s persona. My thesis addresses not only the effects of the increasing (public) interest in the private life of authors in contemporary autobiographical writing but also contributes to wider research on autobiography, genre and intertextuality.

This thesis investigates the use of aphorism in the work (\(Notizenwerk\)) of Ludwig Hohl and selected passages of Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Handke in order to demonstrate the connections (Zusammenhänge) between aphorisms, taking seriously what aphoristic writers say about their own work, i.e. that aphorisms are the result of long secret chains of thought (Nietzsche). The study thereby addresses a gap in the research identified by Neumann. Concurring with Fedler, this thesis understands aphorism as combining conceptual with metaphorical (non-conceptual) thought and chains of thought are investigated on different levels. The dissertation illustrates that aphoristic writers dissolve conceptual boundaries and have elaborate concepts of phantasy (\(Phantasie\)), confirming Blumenberg’s view that wherever the conceptual is questioned, phantasy will be re-evaluated. In the course of this, Kassner’s influence on Hohl and Hohl’s influence on Handke will be shown. With the help of Begriffsgeschichte the thesis will demonstrate unity underlying Hohl’s Notizen, that aphorisms are capable of expressing a complex life-affirming theory, and that furthermore the aphorism cannot be understood without an existential, ineffable and personal dimension. An ontological fragmentariness underlies aphoristic writing, meaning that there is no opposition between aphorism and fragment and that instead aphorisms are inherently fragmentary.

This thesis examines the relation between philosophy, the poem and the subject in the mature philosophy of Alain Badiou. It investigates Badiou’s decisive contribution to these questions primarily by means of comparison, especially to Martin Heidegger, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Theodor Adorno, as well as by analysing Badiou’s readings of poems and prose by Paul Celan and Samuel Beckett respectively as sites of potential dialogue with his immediate predecessors. The thesis stresses the importance of French philosophy’s German heritage, emphasising not only Badiou’s radical departure from Heidegger and his legacy, but also the former’s wholesale rejection of philosophies that would, in the wake of twentieth-century violence and beyond, proclaim their own end or completion. The thesis argues Badiou’s innovative readings of Celan and Beckett to be crucial to understanding this endeavour: for Badiou, both writers use the poem to affirm novel conceptions of subjectivity capable of transcending the historical conditions of their presentation. The title quotation from Badiou’s The Century, ‘Yes, the century is an ashen sun’, anticipates both the affirmative nature of these subjective figures, and their presience, beyond the bounds of a twentieth-century ‘ashen sun’ pervaded by melancholy, for the ‘new suns’ of the twenty-first. The thesis is in four chapters. The first chapter unfolds the central concepts of Badiou’s departure from Heidegger using Paul Celan’s poems to focus the enquiry. It is guided by two of Badiou’s most condensed declarations about the poem, that, firstly, ‘the modern poem harbours a central silence’, and secondly, that ‘Celan completes Heidegger’. The second chapter exposes the political implications of Heidegger’s writings on Friedrich Hölderlin and the role of the subject therein, offering at its close some thoughts about what Badiou calls, following Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, the poem’s ‘becoming-prose’. It concludes by drawing the poem and politics into relation by way of the philosophical category of the subject. The third chapter reads Badiou’s concept of ‘anabasis’ against Heidegger’s ‘homecoming’ in order to think the possibility of a collective political subject’s formation in the wake of Auschwitz. The final chapter examines the imbrication of the Two of love and the ‘latent poem’ in Badiou’s reading of Samuel Beckett’s late prose, contrasting this ‘affirmative’ reading of Beckett to Theodor Adorno’s earlier emphases on negation. Following its investigations of subjectivity, poem and prose throughout, the thesis concludes by returning to the title quotation in order to unfold the particular relations between subject, affirmation and negation Badiou’s philosophy enacts, and to offer further routes forward for research regarding Badiou’s philosophy and aesthetic figuration.

This thesis presents a comparative analysis of Hartmann von Aue’s \(Gregorius\), Kafka’s \( Die\) \(Verwandlung\) and Thomas Mann’s \(Der\) \(Erwählte\), focusing on their uses of biblical motifs. Connected by pervasive themes of guilt and atonement, each text also relies similarly in its expression of these ideas on the use of images which are familiar from the biblical context, and thus suggest archetypal instances of sin and redemption as points of comparison for the protagonist’s fate. In this way all three texts create a manifest sense of helpless affliction by guilt by implementing echoes of the fate of Adam, both in the relationships of their characters, and in structures of recurring loss, decline and expulsion. Each narrative, moreover, also suggests allusions to the opposing figure of Christ through concurrent echoes of the Passion in its imagery of degradation and exile, and, to varying degrees, through the introduction of complementary images of restoration and rehabilitation drawing on patterns of resurrection. The texts diverge, however, in the way in which they relate these fields of imagery, as the correlation of Fall and redemption which is symbolically affirmed in Hartmann’s narrative, and echoed in Mann’s, is disrupted by Kafka’s introduction of a tragic conclusion.

Goethe had a complex and evolving relationship with the nobility, for reasons which can in part be inferred from his biography. This thesis, however, is primarily concerned with examination of relevant texts, and is largely confined to the years before the journey to Italy in 1786. The first three chapters cover the period before his arrival in Weimar. This is followed by an account of the relevant works from the first Weimar decade (1775-1786), with some biographical detail. The main weight has fallen on Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung, a text which is still sometimes undervalued, and has a rather limited bibliography. It is naturally a more direct reflection of his social attitudes than the three major plays associated with the decade, which however have been given separate, more cursory treatments in the three final chapters. General themes include the emergence of Goethe from immature, or at least inherited, stereotypes of the nobility, first towards an attempted alliance between it and the ‘Genie’ of the Sturm und Drang, and then to a more detailed critique made possible by personal experience. The final phase (final, that is, within the limited time frame) was the formation and development of an internal ideal of nobility with an increasingly tenuous relationship with social and political reality. Goethe’s picture of nobility as performance and presentation of self is considered, and its links, for the non-noble author, with theatre and theatrical role performance. Other recurring themes include court manners and their value, both inherently and as an analogue of the heightening which for Goethe was essential to art, court life as a paradigm of social life in general, and the related subject of flight from society.

My thesis investigates the relationship between literary modernism and modernist theology, discussing the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Józef Wittlin in the context of the theological debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I aim to establish parallels between contemporary theologians’ and religious thinkers’ attempts to rethink Christianity’s place in modernity and the poetic explorations of similar issues in the works of Rilke, Eliot, and Wittlin. The first chapter of my thesis discusses the debates surrounding the so-called ‘Modernist crisis’ in the Roman Catholic Church, in which two different visions of Catholicism – the neo-scholastic orthodoxy and the progressive Modernism – came into conflict. In the following years, similar disputes took place in the Church of England and the American Presbyterian Church. Thinkers associated with the ‘Modernist’ understanding of Christianity considered it necessary to develop a new apologetic that would be capable of responding to contemporary philosophy and recent developments in psychology and science. They drew attention to the value of personal experience and individual conscience, began reclaiming the mystical traditions of the past, and became increasingly interested in the psychology of religious experience. In the three literary chapters of my thesis, I argue that the reconceptualisation of the relationship between the religious experience of contemporary Christians and the inherited doctrinal tradition – central to Modernist theologians’ attempts to reconcile Christianity with the critical project of modernity – is also at the heart of the poetic projects of Rilke, Eliot, and Wittlin. I argue that Rilke’s engagement with Orthodox iconography, Eliot’s investment in the search for the meaning of mystical experience and its relation to Christian dogma, and Wittlin’s reinterpretation of traditional hagiography are all attempts at reinterpreting medieval Christian traditions and reconceptualising their place in modernity. Their parallel poetic explorations of the relationship between Christianity and modernity, I argue, demonstrate the existence of a complex network of interactions and exchanges between theological and cultural modernisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Alfred Döblin’s famous 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz has often been discussed in terms of the appropriation of film poetics by the medium of literature and is said to abound with examples of literary montage. In most post-war discussions of literary montage in Berlin Alexanderplatz, however, the device is regularly understood as an umbrella term for anything of stylistic interest. Deploying 1920s and 1930s literary and film criticism I demonstrate that this regularly leads to anachronisms and terminological over-inflation. I thus offer a historically informed definition of literary montage in precise narratological, stylistic and experiential categories. Montage rests on the identification of intradiegetically unmotivated ready-mades and the perceived experiential similarities between the novel, Soviet montage films, and Dadaist photomontage. The lack of motivation affords the experience of disruption which, I demonstrate, has within the Benjaminian “modernity thesis” too often been extrapolated to characterize all film editing. My analysis shows that contemporary critics regularly discriminated between different types of editing on at least three experiential axes – tempo and dynamism, confusion, and disruption. My proposed definition of literary montage thus also allows me to analyse the novel in terms of the key narratological novelties that literary montage introduces: the global proliferation of heterodiegetic zero-level narrators accompanied with the local elimination of zerolevel narrators altogether. In other words, Döblin accomplishes in literary fiction what holds for film fiction in general – the absence of a narrator held to be fictionally in control of the whole of the text. Conversely, through the use of intertitles and the particular type of voice-over interjections, Fassbinder’s adaptation endeavours to emulate the reciprocal commonplace of literary fiction – the narrator’s continuous presence. Paired with Fassbinder’s film, Jutzi’s adaptation demonstrates how visual and sound film montage both differ from literary montage. Whereas literary montage hinges on disruptive stylistic shifts, film montage rests on disruptive spatio-temporal dislocation.

This study focuses on selected texts and authors associated with the cultural centre exil in Vienna which promotes the culture of migrants and minorities, mainly Roma and Sinti, in Austria. Since 1997 exil has awarded the annual prize writing between cultures. The literary prize addresses authors with a migrant background’ whose mother tongue is not German but who write in German. Texts entered for this prize should cover (in the broadest sense) one of the following topics: being foreign, being different, identity, flight, expulsion, arriving, integration or living between cultures. Attached to the centre is the publishing house edition exil. The thesis investigates the negotiation of cultural identities of migrants at the intersection of the cultural centre exil individual life histories and literary creations. Tensions and contradictions between institutional and individual discourses are identified and are related to the literary works of the authors Seher Çakr, Dimitré Dinev, Anna Kim, Grace M. Latigo, Julya Rabinowich, Simone Schönett and Sina Tahayori. My analysis is informed by a theoretical framework which incorporates concepts of cultural identity, canonisation and the construction of community, and combines a cultural sociological approach with a textual one: the analysis focuses on qualitative interviews with selected authors as well as literary texts. I hope to demonstrate the tensions between cultural integration and exclusion and to investigate the place authors around exil negotiate for themselves. The aim of the project is to highlight exil’s as well as the authors’ contribution to the Austrian literary field and to provide a better understanding of their early literary works and their self-conception as writers.

In this thesis, I am developing a theory of the translingual imagination which can be used as a tool to explore literature written in a second language. The term ‘translingual imagination’ was first coined by Steven Kellman in his essay ‘Translingualism and the Literary Imagination’, describing the work of authors writing in a language other than their first. Recent years have seen a growing body of research on these writers, not least because of a risen interest in post-colonial writing and transnational and migration studies. Literary scholars have increasingly questioned ‘the paradigma of monolingualism’, and linguistic research has looked at interrelations between migration,language and identity. However, research projects have often focused on prose writing, predominantly examining the work of canonized male authors (such as Kafka, Conrad or Rushdie), and post-war migrants(such as Turkish-born authors writing in German, or South American-born writers writing in English). Poetry written by women poets of German-Jewish origin has mainly been considered part of Holocaust writing, and over the past decades German scholars have been trying to reclaim these texts as ‘German -Jewish’ poetry. My thesis considers the work of four English poets of German-Jewish origin in the context of translingual writing. While using Kellman’s term, I shall suggest a set of specific criteria to allow for a clearer definition of the ‘translingual imagination’. In applying these criteria to the work of women poets of German-Jewish origin, I will not only show the translingual imagination at work but also encourage a new reading of literature written by German-Jewish refugees that goes beyond the notion of exile poetry.

Carmen Sylva (1843-1916), a German princess and the first Queen of Romania, was a well-known royal figure and a prolific writer. Under this pseudonym, she published around fifty volumes in a wide variety of genres, including poetry, short stories and aphorisms. During her lifetime she was a regular feature in the British periodical press and visited Britain on numerous occasions. Widely reviewed – both celebrated and condemned for her ‘fatal fluency’ – Sylva’s work became marginalised after her death and has yet to be fully recovered. She has only recently received critical attention in her native Germany and has yet to be recuperated within British literary culture. This thesis will examine the reasons behind Sylva’s current obscurity as well as presenting the grounds for her reassessment. It will establish her connection to Britain, markers of which can still be found in its regional geography, as well as the scope of her literary presence in British periodicals. It will draw comparisons between Sylva and her contemporaries and will examine her contribution to fin-de-siècle British literary culture, analysing her short stories in order to detail her engagement with the ‘Woman Question’. This focus places Sylva at the centre of contemporary discussions and her often conflicting responses to such issues further our understanding of the complexity of nineteenth-century literary debates. In reassessing Sylva, this study will address broader notions surrounding the short story, popular fiction, and women’s writing, in order to question both current and contemporary attitudes to literature.

This thesis examines the vernacular psychology presented in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. It focuses on the concept 'hugr', generally rendered in English as ‘mind, soul, spirit’, and explores the conceptual relationships between emotion, cognition and the body. It argues that despite broad similarities, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English vernacular psychology differ more than has previously been acknowledged. Furthermore, it shows that the psychology of Old Norse-Icelandic has less in common with its circumpolar neighbours than proposed by advocates of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism. The thesis offers a fresh interpretation of Old Norse-Icelandic psychology which does not rely on cross-cultural evidence from other Germanic or circumpolar traditions. In particular, I demonstrate that emotion and cognition were not conceived of ‘hydraulically’ as was the case in Old English, and that 'hugr' was not thought to leave the body either in animal form or as a person’s breath. I show that Old Norse-Icelandic psychology differs from the Old English tradition, and argue that the Old English psychological model is a specific elaboration of the shared psychological inheritance of Germanic whose origins require further study. These differences between the two languages have implications for the study of psychological concepts in Proto-Germanic, as I argue that there are fewer semantic components which can be reliably reconstructed for the common ancestor of the North and West Germanic languages. As a whole, the thesis applies insights from cross-cultural linguistics and psychology in order to show how Old Norse-Icelandic psychological concepts differ not only from contemporary Germanic and circumpolar traditions but also from the Present Day English concepts used to describe them. The thesis comprises four chapters and conclusion. Chapter 1 introduces the field of study and presents the methodologies and sources used. It introduces the range of cross-cultural variety in psychological concepts, and places Old Norse-Icelandic 'hugr' and its Old English analogue 'mōd' in a typological perspective. Chapter 2 reviews previous approaches to early Germanic psychology and introduces the major strand of research that forms the background to this study: Lockett’s (2011) proposal that Old English vernacular psychology operated in terms of a ‘hydraulic model’, where the 'mōd' would literally boil and seethe within a person’s chest in response to strong emotions. Chapter 3 outlines the native Old Norse-Icelandic psychological model by examining indigenously produced vernacular texts. It looks first at the claims that 'hugr' could leave the body in animal form or as a person’s breath. It then describes the relationship between emotion, cognition and the body in Old Norse-Icelandic texts and contrasts this with the Old English system. Chapter 4 examines the foreign influences which could potentially account for the differences between the Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic systems. It looks first at the imported medical traditions which were known in medieval Scandinavia at the time Old Norse-Icelandic texts were being committed to writing. Next it considers the psychology of Christian tradition from the early Old Icelandic Homily Book to late-fourteenth-century devotional poetry. Finally, it examines the representation of emotion and the body in the translated Anglo-Norman and Old French texts produced at the court of Hákon Hákonarson and explores how this was transposed to native romances composed in Old Norse-Icelandic. The conclusion summarises the findings of the thesis and presents a proposal for the methodology of studying medieval psychological concepts with directions for further research.

This thesis examines the representations of houses as physical structures in the Íslendingasögur with specific emphasis on the material aspect of housing culture in the Viking Age and medieval period, as well as the interactions between material culture and text. The Íslendingasögur were written in Iceland as of the thirteenth century, but look back onto the Viking Age (c. 800-1100 AD). Comparison with the archaeology of domestic space reveals that the house in the Íslendingasögur generally corresponds with medieval housing models, contemporary with the period of saga writing. However, there are also examples of structures which correspond to the models of the Viking Age. Descriptions of antiquated buildings are sometimes framed in statements that make explicit reference to the chronological separation between the Viking Age and the writer’s present time, suggesting a familiarity with the evolution of housing culture. Detailed analysis of buildings in the sagas reveals domestic space in its context of use, and demonstrates how the physical nature of the house and farm framed the productive and social activities that went on within. The materiality of domestic life has particular importance for the dispensing of hospitality. Demonstrations of domestic space in use also allow for a better understanding of the relationship between objects and language, and elucidate some difficulties in translation and academic usage both in archaeology and literary studies. Material culture can itself influence the processes of composition in oral/written narratives such as the sagas, by inspiring the formation of narrative episodes. The built environment can also provide a contextual framing for narratives, acting as a mnemonic device facilitating the preservation and transmission of saga narratives.

This thesis examines the role(s) played by German writers as cultural ambassadors after the First World War, at a time when culture was seen as increasingly important in Germany’s international relations. It focuses on the development and activities of the German branch of the International PEN Club and the international engagement of four writers from across Weimar Germany’s cultural and political spectrum: Hans Friedrich Blunck, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann and Ernst Toller. By exploring the agendas pursued by writers on the international stage and their direct and indirect interactions with state and non-state institutions, the thesis illuminates a spectrum of approaches to cultural diplomacy in the Weimar years. The thesis demonstrates how attempts to use varying conceptions of culture to diverse diplomatic ends were underpinned by manifold understandings of Germany’s position in the European and international orders; illustrates the differing negotiations of the sensitive relationship between culture and politics; and traces a range of expressions of nationalism, internationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism. This study of writers’ contributions to German foreign affairs sheds new light on the selected case studies and on the openness and contingency of the period, bringing new perspectives to bear on the complexities of the cultural politics and ideological landscape of the Weimar Republic.

Scholarly interest in travel literature has increased substantially in recent years. However, there has been a lack of sustained, cohesive commentary on the journey motif in German Romantic culture, particularly its origins and manifestations in literature and philosophy. My doctoral research fills this gap through a philosophically- and historically-informed reading of German Romanticism. The thesis examines 1) the paradigmatic template of the literary journey established by Goethe in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 2) metaphors of movement and mobility within the Idealist philosophy of Kant and Fichte and their role, 3) the manner in which these metaphors migrate into the theoretical and prose writings of Novalis, 4) Tieck’s notion of the sublime and its relevance for the Romantic journey, and 5) the late Romantic satirization of the journey motif within Eichendorff’s prose. Additionally, the thesis serves to show how philosophical discourse of the Enlightenment had reached something of an impasse in its use of the journey motif, with the subject unable to evolve and renew itself beyond the strictures of particular models of subjective cognition. The Romantics thought literary practice was to supersede philosophy and it was mobility in the form of the journey as both metaphor and process, which helped bring about this transition and created a flexible self-authoring and self- renewing model of the subject. The study also recounts a particular history of Romanticism which charts, via the history of the journey, the movement’s youthful idealism, the fear of the pitfalls of human subjectivity, and its eventual self-distanciation through parody.

This thesis considers prose texts by the Austrian authors Marlene Streeruwitz and Lilian Faschinger from the viewpoint of intertextuality. The research does not rely on the narrow definitions of intertextuality which are concerned with the appearance of an anterior text in a later text, or on studies of source and influence. Rather my treatment of the novels considers the way meanings are constructed by a network of cultural and social discourses which embody distinct codes, expectations and assumptions. This study discusses the ways in which the chosen texts, through their intertexts, display a postmodern impetus towards reappropriating authorized discourse in new and challenging ways, from feminist perspectives. My intertextual readings are alert to two main threads – the critique of aspects of Austrian society evident in the novels of Streeruwitz and Faschinger and their place within the tradition of Österreich-Beschimpfung, and the interventions into issues pertaining to gender. I examine thematic similarities and differences in the texts, which draw attention to specifically Austrian or gender related issues, as well as scrutinizing formal and linguistic elements. Ultimately, my thesis poses and suggests answers to questions regarding strategies of intervention by feminist authors and the fruitfulness of intertextual readings.

In 1989 the American Surrealist associated painter, sculptor, and writer Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) suggested an intermedial dimension to her multifaceted œuvre in her essay ‘Some Parallels in Word and Pictures.’ Taking this essay as a critical point of departure, this thesis offers an intertextual theorisation of Tanning’s practice. It concerns the role of narrative in her work, and the way in which she borrows from the histories of art and literature as source materials. The thesis presented here is that Tanning’s work from the context of Surrealism and beyond makes reference to the fairy tales and other, more extensive works of literature which she read in her youth whilst at work in her public library in Galesburg, Illinois, whether implicitly in visual references or explicitly in her works’ titles. Throughout, the library is read as a key source of inspiration. This is true too of the impact which Tanning’s belated visit to the Louvre had on her post-Surrealist stylistic development. Broadly, this thesis aims to rethink the methodologies used to interpret Surrealism, and reunite the literary and visual aspects upon which the Surrealist movement was initially founded. This interdisciplinary approach contributes fresh perspectives by marrying the history of Surrealism with that of the fairy tale, including that of Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, and the fairy tale illustrations of Gustave Doré, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham, and John Tenniel. The anti-fairy tale emerges as useful critical tool in defining the intertext which appears when Surrealism and the fairy tale are paired. The ‘demythologising’ project of Angela Carter is useful to call upon in the articulation of the anti-fairy tale, and her work is easily placed in dialogue with that of Tanning, especially in terms of its feminist leanings. The dialogic, intertextual theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, further developed by Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, support this reading of Tanning’s visual narratives. More recently such theories of intertextuality have manifested themselves in the work of Dutch narratologist Mieke Bal who proposes a model of ‘preposterous history’ in order to creatively re-read the relationship between source (or pre-text) and intertext. This research is primarily text-based and devotes long-awaited attention to Tanning’s literary works which are read visually, including her short story ‘Blind Date’ (1943), and her novel 'Abyss' (1977), later reworked and republished as 'Chasm: A Weekend' (2004). I argue that her novel provides textual continuity with her Surrealist visual narratives of the 1940s creating a more cyclical, ‘preposterous’ shape to her career than has previously been acknowledged.

It is undoubtedly one of Kafka's finest erotic scenes – the description of K.'s furtive tryst on the tap-room floor. – Wrapped in Frieda's arms, he rolls back and forth through small puddles of beer and rubbish, her small body burning in his reluctant hands. "Hours passed there," writes Kafka, "hours breathing together with a single heartbeart [gemeinsamen Herzschlags], hours in which K. constantly felt he was lost or had wandered farther into foreign lands [der Fremde] than any human being before him ..." What makes this passage so compelling is the manner in which Kafka, in four short lines, manages to distil everything ambiguous and terrifying about the erotic relation into a scene which, otherwise, could almost pass for sentimental.

Elfriede Jelinek is one of the few German-speaking contemporary authors who have attracted intense attention of both critics and scholars while being alive. After the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 even more analyses on her works have been published. In spite of her apparent presence in the public realm, critics tend to read her works as "authorless" texts, in which the narrative voices merge and make it impossible to discern either personal or authorial voices. The author's concern with post-modern and poststructuralist theories such as Roland Barthes' have reinforced the tendency to marginalize the topic of authorship in Jelinek scholarship. This thesis aims to analyse authorial voices and motives in Jelinek's prose texts Lust, Gier and Neid and to contextualize them with the images of the author that were produced outside the texts, namely in the media and in literary criticism. I would thereby like to demonstrate that these figurations form an important connection between text and context and help provide an insight into central motifs of Jelinek's works. The abovementioned novels are suitable for such an analysis, as they help establish a line of development of the authorship motif throughout the three decades of Jelinek's literary production. Furthermore, this analysis closes an existing gap in research on Jelinek as there exists no study that compares the three novels. The novel Gier has so far mostly been ignored by research and there are very few studies on the online project Neid. Dealing with prose texts instead of plays has the advantage of being able to highlight the function of the narrative comment that has developed into an authorial voice over time. The purpose of this study is neither the revision of the existence of the criticism of the notions of the author or the subject within the texts nor shall it be to establish a biographical link between aesthetics and author. The idea is to show that Jelinek considers the relationship between life and literature, between author and public as essential mechanisms of power. These cannot just be annihilated through criticising them, or by declaring the author as irrelevant. Jelinek's reflections on authorship are based on a cultural critique that deals with the conceptualisation of bourgeois subjectivity and thereafter with the notion of the authorial discourse. Jelinek's authorial criticism draws on Foucault's theoretical writings on the social and historical genesis of the notion of authorship that he has coined in the term 'author-function'. Questioning the instance of the speaker, Jelinek simultaneously reflects on the conditions and strategies of authorization of who is speaking. Jelinek's literary self-reflections speak of an authorial self-understanding that could be seen as a derivative form of engaged writing stemming from a reading of Adorno's Negative Dialectics. Drawing on Adorno, Jelinek develops a negative aesthetics that influences her authorial concept. She does not aim to develop an aesthetics suggesting a positive form of seemingly free engaged writing, but a mise-en-scène of the paradoxical constitution of authorship in modern capitalism.

Thesis Abstract. The purpose of this thesis is to examine Old English and Old Icelandic literary examples of monstrosity from a modern theoretical perspective. I examine the processes of monstrous change by which humans can become identified as monsters, focusing on the role played by social and religious pressures. In the first chapter, I outline the aspects of monster theory and medieval thought relevant to the role of society in shaping identity, and the ways in which anti-societal behaviour is identified with monsters and with monstrous change. Chapter two deals more specifically with Old English and Old Icelandic social and religious beliefs as they relate to human and monstrous identity. I also consider the application of generic monster terms in Old English and Old Icelandic. Chapters three to six offer readings of humans and monsters in Old English and Old Icelandic literary texts in cases where a transformation from human to monster occurs or is blocked. Chapter three focuses on Grendel and Heremod in Beowulf and the ways in which extreme forms of anti-societal behaviour are associated with monsters. In chapter four I discuss the influence of religious beliefs and secular behaviour in the context of the transformation of humans into the undead in the Íslendingasögur. In chapter five I consider outlaws and the extent to which criminality can result in monstrous change. I demonstrate that only in the most extreme instances is any question of an outlaw’s humanity raised. Even then, the degree of sympathy or admiration evoked by such legendary outlaws as Grettir, Gísli and Hörðr means that though they are ambiguous in life, they may be redeemed in death. The final chapter explores the threats to human identity represented by the wilderness, with specific references to Guthlac A, Andreas and Bárðar saga and the impact of Christianity on the identity of humans and monsters. I demonstrate that analysis of the social and religious issues in Old English and Old Icelandic literary sources permits nuanced readings of monsters and monstrosity which in turn enriches understanding of the texts in their entirety.

Images of movement represent a ubiquitous element in Kafka’s writings. This study explores the role of these images as a form of patterning in the fictions. With an eye to continuity and evolution, the study explores the patterns of movement pervading Kafka’s early collection Betrachtung and a selection of texts written between 1915 and 1917. What emerges is a persistent concern with the condition of restlessness, its origins and consequences. The condition emerges from a conflict between the protagonists’ desire for stability and purposive activity and their experience of dynamic forces that escape or resist any form of containment. This conflict results in an oscillating motion that dominates the physical, mental and narrative movements shaping Kafka’s stories. Analysing the relation between early and later texts, the thesis argues that Kafka deploys this central conflict productively to capture a wide spectrum of states of mind. As he explores restlessness in ever wider circles of life, he explores psychological, social and ideological structures, as well as some of the grand narratives of life, death and myth. This differentiated view on the inner dynamics of Kafka's narratives provides a fruitful perspective on questions concerning the development of the oeuvre as a whole.

This practice-based research investigates the relationship between the process of making layered images and narratives of walked journeys. Two such journeys – Franz Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise, and the autobiographical account of John Clare’s escape from an asylum, Reccolections &c Of Journey From Essex – were examined and compared through a body of drawings, prints and paintings. A study of the construction of the two narratives highlighted their layered composition: Winterreise is experienced as a synthesis of Wilhelm Müller’s poems and Schubert’s musical setting; whilst the full impact of Clare’s account is appreciated in the context of his poetry and biography. The research began with a bookwork, a visual response to the layering of information observed in the song cycle of Winterreise, and led to the formulation of a method of interpreting narratives using Thomas De Quincey’s model of The Palimpsest. De Quincey identified the effacements, amendments and aggregation of material in a palimpsest manuscript with the absorption of experience. In paintings made to interpret the experience of Winterreise, abrading layers of a picture surface elicited the compound characteristics of the narrative: allowing one idea to be seen through another. The fictive identity of the song cycle emerged in a suite of monoprints, through their assembly of layered imagery. Conversely, John Clare’s account is that of an actual journey, physically walked. The research culminated in a focus on the terrain of the two narratives. The metaphorical landscape of Winterreise is contrasted with Clare’s more visceral relationship with earth and trees through a series of paintings based on Journey From Essex. The research discovered new possibilities in the narratives’ meaning through the invention of a visual language to describe both physical nature of walking and a distinctive sense of place.

More than eighty years after the death of its author, Kafka fiction continues to stimulate diverse critical interest: only Shakespeare has generated more publications, more biographies or indeed more PhD theses. In recent years, scholarship has recognised the irreducible, polysemantic nature of Kafka’s writing as a stimulus for this regenerative criticism. Another factor is the author himself, along with his well-known biography. Particularly in published monographs, Franz Kafka’s life story has attracted almost as much attention as the fiction he produced. Thus, unusually for a writer whose works have been so thoroughly dissected by criticism, Franz Kafka seems to have survived the so-called death of the author, promulgated throughout literary theory. This thesis highlights a tension between these two stimuli; between the elusive multivocality of Kafka’s fiction and the ongoing influence of the author. It argues that mythologies about Kafka have now outlived their usefulness, and suggests that greater attentiveness to theoretical insights might benefit the field. Accordingly, this study proposes new ways of looking at Kafka which marginalise the influence of the author and related approaches to his fiction. In its investigation of authority as a theme of Kafka’s writing, this volume repositions Kafka’s fictional and non-fictional output within new and established contexts, exploring philosophical and critical dimensions of the oeuvre. In so doing, it asks what Kafka can teach us about our reading of Kafka, our reading of theory and reading in general.

Botho Strauß, source for polemic and target of vitriol over three decades, proposes an unsettling understanding of the poetic in his prose works, from his earliest writing to most recent publications. The thesis contends that this understanding of the poetic is deeply indebted to the late thought of Martin Heidegger: it investigates the nature of the debt, highlighting Strauß’ adoption and adaptation of ideas central to the philosopher, including his thinking on the work of art, technology, language and poetry. The body of the thesis examines Strauß’ views through detailed exegeses of Beginnlosigkeit, Wohnen Dämmern Lügen and Fragmente der Undeutlichkeit, while drawing extensively on other works and writing. The readings identify and elucidate a number of key terms critical to Strauß’ proposed poetic. Underpinning these terms, the thesis contends, and bound to the understanding of the poetic, is an ontological concern for philosophical truth derived from Heidegger. The thesis concludes that far from a retreat by Strauß into obscurantist mysticism and resignation from a putative cultural, social and political collective, accusations repeatedly levelled at him and here grouped under the rubric of fatalism, Strauß offers in and through his works a dynamic engagement with this conception of truth, which the thesis hypothesises as a poetics of dwelling.

The aim of this thesis is to present the fundamental philosophical positions of Early German Romanticism, focusing on the three following writers: J. C. F. Holderlin, Novalis, and F. Schlegel. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of the first-philosophical, or ontological foundations of Romanticism and discusses its appropriation and critique of the work of Fichte, arriving at an elucidation of Romantic ontology as an ontology of differencing and production. The second chapter looks at how epistemology is transformed, in the hands of the Romantics, and due to the attention they paid to language, semiotic theory, and the operations of irony in discourse, into poetology - a theory of knowledge, into a theory of poetic production. In the third chapter a confrontation between the philosophical positions of Romanticism and those of the main currents of German Idealism (Schelling, Hegel) is undertaken; through this confrontation, the essential trait of Romantic thought is arrived at, namely the thought of an incomplete Absolute, as opposed to the absolute as totality in Idealism. The final chapter considers the avenue left open by the notion of the incomplete Absolute, and the Romantics' chief legacy, namely the theory of literature; literature is thus seen as coextensive with philosophy, and analysed under three conceptual categories (the theory of genre, the fragment, criticism) which all betray their provenance from the thought lying at the core of Romanticism: the incomplete Absolute. Finally, in the conclusion a summation of this exposition of romanticism is presented, alongside a brief consideration of the relevance of the Romantic project in contemporary critical/philosophical debates.

This thesis examines Kulturkritik and the question of the representation of difference in the work of Anne Duden. It uncovers a far-reaching interrogation of Western culture in Duden's work as oppositional relations between culture-nature, mind-body, subject and object are constantly questioned. It examinesthe criticism of the treatment of the body in Western culture which appears in the texts in a variety of ways. Though oblique reference to Cartesian and Enlightenment selves, the texts question dominant modes of being in the West and the consequences of this promotion. This is examined firstly through an analysis of Duden's essays on paintings of George and the dragon where the links between Duden's thought and the radical philosophy coming out of the 1960s are investigated. Then the prose works Ubergang and Das Judasschaf are explored to highlight the criticism of binary structures which I argue needs to be understood with reference to the types of selves and bodies which are privileged in Western culture; the production of 'useful/rational' bodies and hierarchical and oppositional subject-object, mind-matter relations prevalent in Enlightenment thought. I also argue that there is not just a criticism of structures perceived to be dominant in Western culture in Duden's texts, but that different modes of being are conveyed by the writing as differences within culture. The narrators become selves through fluid processes of interchange with the environment rather than existing as fixed entities. This analysis is linked to Duden's questioning of abstract and generalised concepts which enables a reading of the experiences of the narrators not as a 'breakdown' or loss of self, but as expressions of alternative modes of being. A close examination of the narrative style in Ubergang and Das Judasschaf analyses how selves, bodies and reality are represented. I argue that the writing is centrally concerned with areas beneath fixed forms and remains immanent to the experiences of pain, dissolution, joy, panic and the semi-conscious body rather than transcending and translating them into speech. Thus the writing continually gives us the impression that it paradoxically narrates word-less experiences. This writing of the body and other realms normally considered beyond representation questions universal norms and concepts. However, the narrative does not descend into nonsense and differences and specificities are not located beyond words but expressed in the text. The avant-garde properties of Duden's texts are examined through an analysis of montage techniques and the juxtaposition of levels of time in 'Ubergang and Das Judasschaf. Narrative and formal aspects are then explicitly linked to history and politics in an examination of Das Judasschaf and the centrality of the problem of living in a post-Holocaust culture. I will argue that the text's Kulturkritik indirectly interrogates the culture which produced the Holocaust and that the breakdown of narrative can be linked to the complexities of the post-Holocaust historical state. In addition the presentation of the Holocaust through the quotation of historical documents is understood in terms of the text's inability to represent the Holocaust. Aesthetics and politics are also brought together in the examination of the Steinschlag poems. With reference to Duden's essays on aesthetics, I argue that the Steinschlag texts speak with and through the broken remains of a language left over from the atrocities of the 20th Century. The musical re-configurations of the remnants, however, produce a negative hope by speaking from the sites of the gaps in culture and history.

This study seeks to identify a coalition of philosophy and literature in the work of Franz Kafka, and begins with a grounding of his output in the philosophical context from which it emerged. This relatively under-researched philosophical backdrop consists in Kafka's study, at university and in a discussion group, of philosophical positions derived from the "descriptive psychology" of Franz Brentano. Kafka was hence conversant with several philosophical agendas, notably those of logic, Gestalt psychology, and a nascent form of phenomenology, which all derived their impetus from Brentano's work. The initial issue, therefore, is that of assessing the extent of a purported influence of such theories on Kafka's texts. What emerges as a "strategy" of Kafka's work is the aesthetic exploitation of such positions; a tactic which constitutes an almost parodistic subversion of these early forms of phenomenological thought. Thus on the one hand it is implied that the narrative technique of Kafka's work, and in particular the representation of consciousness and its "world", is derived from Brentanian thought, and on the other that this influence is modulated in a specific direction, which renders these texts so singularly amenable to post-structuralist thought. My project consequently proceeds to examine the post-structuralist response to Kafka while juxtaposing this analysis with the grounding of his work in proto-phenomenology. Central to this stage of the study are Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari, and the scrutiny of their perspectives will be organized by the themes of authorship, interpretation, power, and desire. The exploration of the "deconstructive" standpoint, represented primarily through Blanchot and Derrida, will be guided by an account of why such a stance seems to be accommodated so readily by Kafka's work, and also of the extent to which his texts could be said, on the basis of the influence of Brentanian thought, to resist such appropriation.

This thesis is concerned with Siegfried Kracauer’s response to the challenges of modernity as exemplified by the Weimar Republic and its culture. A consideration of the literary dimension of Kracauer’s work is a central aspect of my approach. Beginning with a brief examination of Kracauer s early, epistemological writings, which adopt an anti-modem tone, my thesis then examines his shift towards a materialist critique of modernity. Using his essay 'Das Ornament der Masse' as a key example, I argue that Kracauer assumes the stance of a flâneur vis-à-vis the culture he examines. While this is consistent with his role as a Feuilleton journalist, the flâneur's detachment compromises Kracauer's political position. Here, and throughout the thesis, Kracauer's narrative approach and its effects are drawn out through comparisons with contemporary literary texts. In the remaining three chapters of my thesis, I analyse the novels Ginster and Georg, as well as the sociological study Die Angestellten. Here, I suggest, Kracauer attempts to transcend the limitations imposed by the flâneur's detachment. In Ginster he critically reflects on his own personal and political development while Die Angestellten is an attempt at social intervention. In Georg, finally, Kracauer returns to exploring crucial factors of Weimar (political) culture and considers his own role, as a journalist, within them.

My thesis explores the various ways in which a small selection of novels published in 1931 depict and respond to a widespread sense of crisis during the final phase of the Weimar Republic, arguing that the authors foreground a powerful sense that modernity itself is in a state of crisis. I consider how the novels articulate diverse experiences of modernity, both within and beyond the metropolis and from different social, generational and gender perspectives. Moreover, I examine how the authors' evaluation of modernity is reflected in their use of formal and narrative techniques. Focusing upon Gabriele Tergit's Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm, Hans Fallada's Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben and Irmgard Keun's Gilgi - eine von uns, I contend that the ambiguity and complexity of the authors' responses towards modernity were often flattened, simplified or ignored by reviewers in the politically polarized environment of the late Weimar Republic. This is partly the result of the debates about Neue Sachlichkeit which influenced the original reception of the novels and have continued to shape subsequent criticism. The novels themselves have often been labelled as classic examples of Neue Sachlichkeit. However, it is my contention that the novels also problematize some of the programmatic statements about this movement which circuated widely in the Weimar Republic. Therefore, I seek to re-examine the novels within the context of Weimar debates about modernity and Neue Sachlichkeit, as well as in the light of recent theoretical work in these areas. I also draw extensive comparisons and contrasts between the models of modernity foregrounded in Tergit's novel and Emile Durkheim's writings on anomie; in Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben and Ernst Bloch's Erbschaft dieser Zeit, and in Gilgi - eine von uns and Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World.

This thesis is a dialectical exploration of the importance of the Jewish tradition and theology in the work of Walter Benjamin, primarily through his reading of Franz Joseph Molitor's Philosophie der Geschichte oder über die Tradition, and secondarily through his close friendship with Gershom Scholem. It also argues that the influence of the Jewish tradition is a constant factor in Benjamin's work, transcending the conventional division between his 'metaphysical' Frühwerk and his 'Marxist' Spätwerk. The first chapter presents a historical-philosophical overview of the form and content of the Jewish tradition, with particular emphasis on the seminal importance of language as the medium of tradition. The second chapter offers both an exhaustive philological investigation of Benjamin's contacts with Molitor's book, on the basis of new information gathered from both Benjamin's and Scholem's diaries and correspondence, as well as a selection and discussion of some of the most salient and relevant aspects of Philosophie der Geschichte. The third and final chapter assesses the impact of the foregoing as it culminates in the work of Walter Benjamin. Firstly, it focuses on the early essays Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen and Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie, drawing parallels between their conception of language as a medium and Jewish concepts of language and tradition as they are presented by Molitor and Scholem. Secondly, it turns to the Protokolle zu Drogenversuchen and to Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus, Das Passagen-Werk, to illustrate the continuity of his thoughts on language and tradition in the concept of profane Erleuchtung. After each chapter, a short interlude focuses on different forms of Judaism in Benjamin's work, notably the Jewish concept of commentary in the essays on Kafka, the concept of the understated apocalypse and the name of God.

This thesis focuses on the novels of Hermann Burger. It considers the experimental nature of Burger's writings as a form of opposition, or 'Verweigerung', to the restrictive discourses of Swiss nationhood expressed in the notion of 'Enge'. A central tenet of the argument advanced here is that Hermann Burger is both a very self-consciously Swiss author, and, at the same time, very self-consciously experimental; a constant tension between these two aspects of his writing is manifest in all his work. Burger was not a provincial Swiss writer. Rather, he was an eclectic writer, and this thesis will examine the manner in which his work is framed by a broad spectrum of literary and philosophical ideas current in the wider international context of literary debate which serve to challenge the narrowness of intellectual discussion and forms of representation in Switzerland. To extend the discursive possibilities of the individual within the cultural space of the nation, Burger's novels involve a radical play with form and language which blurs the boundaries between the real, the unreal and the surreal, in order to challenge notions of the 'real'. A conflict between normative modes of expression and the desire for self-expression develops which is thematically central in Burger's work. His novels present the reader with a complex set of inter-related issues: national identity; national culture; Art; nature; literature and representational strategies; art and life. The methodology adopted in this thesis reflects the belief that Burger's work is best appreciated as an eclectic mix of ideas. As Burger engages with the multifarious aspects of life and seeks to give them form, so his work is considered in relation to a broad range of theories which, taken together, provide insights into his work.

This study developed from an initial interest in the literature of the German exiles in which canon Klaus Mann's work between 1933 and 1945 figured prominently. This in turn evoked a curiosity toward this still relatively unknown son of Thomas Mann, intensified not least by the pathos of a life characterised by early promise, fame and prominence that ended in obscurity, despair and suicide. Yet these aspects of Klaus Mann's life appeared to have been overlooked by British scholars and with them the early and later years of Mann's career. The years of Mann's exile have been well documented and researched and place Mann's fiction of this time within the canon of Exilliteratur. Those texts which went before, however, have received only scant attention. Yet it is precisely in the novels and essays from the Weimar Republic that Mann developed and refined the techniques and themes that would define his later works. To overlook them is to suggest that the decisive moment of exile represented a caesura in Mann's career, thus masking the underlying continuity within Mann's oeuvre. For this reason, this study concentrates primarily on the early years of Mann's career, on the period from 1924 to 1933, to illustrate the progression and development within his work that would culminate in the novels of his exile. While Mann's prose dictates the approach I have taken, this is not exclusively 'literary' to the exclusion of all other concerns and potential external influences on his work. It assesses the complementary characteristics of Mann's fiction and his essayistic prose, much of which has only become readily available in the last five years, against the context of their creation during the Weimar Republic. In consequence, this work embraces the cultural, political and social context of this age, embracing its contradictory nature where progression and experimentation battled against the endemic regression and reaction of the Republic's institutions. However, it does not intend to provide a detailed discussion of the complexities that underlie this period of German history. For this I refer the reader to the body of research which deals specifically with this topic.