This volume explores the synergies and tensions between memory studies and postcolonial studies across literatures and media from Europe, Africa and the Americas, and intersections with Asia. It makes a unique contribution to this growing international and interdisciplinary field by considering an unprecedented range of languages and sources.
Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910) is one of the major figures of 19th-century German Realist writing, acknowledged as an innovator both stylistically and thematically. But until now there has been little concentration on the international and postcolonial dimensions of Raabe's work - his literary critique of colonialism, his engagement with modernization and globalization, his involvement in 19th century German discourses about America, Africa and Asia, and the links between international and national issues in his writing. In Raabe International, contributions from many eminent critics address Raabe both as a writer on world affairs and as a subject himself for translation and comment outside of Germany.
Transcultural History and National Memory
This volume makes a substantial contribution to developing Comparative Postcolonial Studies within Europe. Theoretical inquiry into the diversity and interconnectedness of European colonial histories and postcolonial conditions combines with new approaches to conceptualizing internal European (post-) colonialisms, and case studies and comparative studies of the literature and culture of a broad range of countries and language areas, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, the former Habsburg region and the Baltics, along with the German language area, Britain and France. Authors consider the repercussions of overseas colonialism across Europe, postcolonial migration, multiculturalism and postcolonial politics of memory, as well as the interface between colonialism and nationalism and the innovative cross-mapping of postcolonial research and Memory Studies. Transnational and comparative approaches are used to shed new light on the relationship between global developments and regional specificities, along with the interaction between (post-) colonial memory and (national) identity from the nineteenth century to the present day.
"This is the first comprehensive study of contemporary German literature's intense engagement with German colonialism and with Germany's wider involvement in European colonialism. Building on the author's decade of research and publication in the field, the book discusses some fifty novels by German, Swiss, and Austrian writers, among them Hans Christoph Buch, Alex Capus, Christof Hamann, Lukas Hartmann, Ilona Maria Hilliges, Giselher W. Hoffmann, Dieter Kühn, Hermann Schulz, Gerhard Seyfried, Thomas von Steinaecker, Uwe Timm, Ilija Trojanow, and Stephan Wackwitz. Drawing on international postcolonial theory, the German tradition of cross-cultural literary studies, and on memory studies, the book brings the hitherto neglected German case to the international debate in postcolonial literary studies"--Publisher website, July 5, 2013.
When writers and critics such as Gustav Freytag, Julian Schmidt and Berthold Auerbach constituted the new literary movement called ‘Realism’ in response to the 1848 revolution and its defeat, ‘Romanticism’ acted as a critical foil for the new departure. This polemically motivated and historically-anchored terminology has survived in today’s orthodox view that ‘Realism’ and ‘Romanticism’ mark not just two distinct periods in literary history, but also two radically opposed concepts of literature. Combining theoretical approaches and overviews with a range of case studies, interdisciplinary investigations and comparative enquiries, this volume reassesses German Realism’s relationship with Romanticism and sheds new light on the multiple ways in which writers from Stifter and Keller to Raabe and Fontane remember Romanticism, engaging with its problems, themes, motifs and poetics. By re-examining the engagement with Romanticism in the literature and culture of Realism between c. 1840 and 1900, the book challenges existing concepts of periodisation and works towards a more differentiated understanding of the complex dynamics in the field of nineteenth-century ‘realisms’ and their role in the overarching intellectual trajectories from Romanticism to Modernism.
Das Handbuch bietet erstmals einen umfassenden interdisziplinären Überblick über die postkoloniale Theorie und Forschung in den Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften. Es verbindet die Einführung in das Thema mit einer kritischen Zwischenbilanz zu diesem internationalen Forschungsfeld. Auf einen Theorieteil und die lexikalische Darstellung von postkolonialen Grundbegriffen folgen Artikel zur Literatur-, Kultur- und Mediengeschichte des Kolonialismus und Postkolonialismus in den betroffenen Kulturräumen sowie ein Anhang mit historischen Überblicken zu einzelnen Ländern und weiterführenden Informationen. Das Handbuch richtet sich an wissenschaftliche Leserinnen und Leser und bietet Ansatzpunkte für künftige Forschung, soll aber auch für Studierende und interessierte Laien eine verlässliche Basis zur Auseinandersetzung mit der europäischen Kolonialgeschichte, ihren kulturellen Resonanzen und ihrer postkolonialen Aufarbeitung in Literatur und Kultur bereitstellen.
The fleeting nature of time is a defining feature of modern and postmodern existence. Identified by Reinhart Koselleck as the temporalization («Verzeitlichung») of all areas of human knowledge and experience around 1800, the concept of critical time continues to intrigue researchers across the arts and humanities. This volume combines theoretical and critical approaches to temporality with case studies on the engagement with the modern sense of time in German literature, visual art and culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Contributions explore key areas in the cultural history of time: time in art and aesthetic theory, the intellectual history of time, the relationship between time and space in literature and visual art, the politics of time and memory, and the poetics of time. Essays question the focus on acceleration in recent critical discourse by also revealing the contrapuntal fascination with slowness and ecstatic moments, notions of polyphonous time and simultaneity, the dialectic of time and space, and complex aesthetic temporalities breaking with modern time-regimes.
Leben – Werk – Wirkung
Das Handbuch gibt erstmals einen umfassenden Überblick über das Gesamtwerk Wilhelm Raabes (Erzähltexte, Lyrik, Zeichnungen) sowie seine literatur- und kulturgeschichtlichen Kontexte. Hinzu treten biografische, editorische, poetologische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Grundlagen zum Verständnis von Raabes Leben und Werk. Als führender Autor des 19. Jahrhunderts war Raabe nicht nur Vertreter des Realismus, sondern stellte die ideologischen, erkenntnistheoretischen und ästhetischen Parameter realistischen Erzählens immer schärfer auf die Probe, um am Jahrhundertende an die Schwelle zur Moderne zu gelangen.
P. Arnds: Die Hämelschen Kinder zwischen bürgerlichem und mythischem Realismus – M. Dobstadt: Zum komplizierten Verhältnis Raabes zur Moderne – H.-J. Hahn: Angst, Außenseiter, Antisemitismus – S. Illmer: Rhetorik des „Wissens von der Welt“ bei Raabe und Jensen – S. Krebs: Sprache und Identität in Die Akten des Vogelsangs und Frischs Stiller – C. Meierhofer: Frühe Neuzeit in Raabes Erzählwerk – I.-K. Patrut: ‚Nation‘ bei Raabe – P. Ramponi: Literarische Artefakte als globale Akteure im poetischen Realismus – T. Sander: Poetisierung des Antiquariatsbuchhandels in , Ein Frühling‘ – C. Sinn: Realismus und Puppenspiel (Raabe, Fontane, Storm) – R. Simon: Narrative Stillstellung von Historie (Die Gänse von Bützow) – C. Stadler: Der kranke Bürger in Deutscher Mondschein – T. Voß: Altershausen, Moderne und Altersdiskurs.