This study charts Wolfgang Borchert's development from a rebellious teenager with a passion for acting, via his service in the Wehrmacht and his imprisonment by the Nazis, to his brief, but intense career as an important postwar dramatist and writer of short stories.
This is the first full-length computer-aided examination of Goethe's novel. This study focuses on a close critical analysis of the text, underpinning its findings with often incontrovertible evidence based on the outputs of computer-generated indexes and concordances. The examination of the text itself is complemented by an overview of critical attitudes toward the novel, from Goethe's contemporaries down to the present day, and by an outline of the possibilities and limitations of a computer-based text analysis.
This study sheds fresh light on Christian Weise as a moral satirist, as he appears in his four novels. These novels are among the last products of a moral-satirical literary tradition stretching back to the Middle Ages. Whilst borrowing on this tradition for the sources for his work, Weise recasts traditional models and situations to suit his own didactic aim, which is to teach his reader how to adapt his behaviour to the demands of a changing society. At the same time, Weise's consciousness of the discrepancies between the world of reality and that of literary creation leads to the author's disassociation from the figures and events he is manipulating: an awareness of the irony of authorship permeates the four novels and widens their narrative perspective.
Lebensbild des früh verstorbenen Nachkriegsautors (1921-1948), dessen Werk bis heute beim Lesepublikum und auf der Bühne präsent geblieben ist.
Wolfgang Borchert sah sich als Sprecher einer Generation „ohne Heimat“ und „ohne Heimkehr“ und erreichte damit früh ein großes Publikum. Die Heimkehr - nicht nur der besiegten deutschen Soldaten - wird nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg zu einem zentralen Thema deutschsprachiger Autoren, die sich im Unterschied zu Exil und „innerer Emigration“ zur „jungen Generation“ bekennen. Das Gelingen oder Misslingen der Heimkehr ist auch eine Frage des persönlichen Überlebens. Darüber hinaus erlaubt das Thema Beiträge zur Antwort auf die bis heute virulenten Fragen nach Krieg, kollektiver und individueller Kriegsschuld, nach dem Verhalten in der Diktatur und nach der 'Zukunft' des besiegten Deutschlands.