A Companion to German Realism
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Kontje, Todd, PUBLISHER: Camden House (NY), This volume of new ong>essaysong> by leading scholars treats a representative sampling of ong>Germanong> realist prose from the period to , the period of its dominance of the ong>Germanong> literary landscape. It includes ong>essaysong> on familiar, canonical authors -- Stifter, Freytag, Raabe, Fontane, Thomas Mann -- and canonical texts, but also considers writers frequently omitted from traditional literary histories, such as Luise MAAA1/2hlbach, Friedrich Spielhagen, Louise von FranAAA1/2ois, Karl May, and Eugenie Marlitt. The introduction situates ong>Germanong> realism in the context of both ong>Germanong> literary history and of developments in other European literatures, and surveys the most prominent critical studies of ninteenth-century realism. The ong>essaysong> treat the following topics: Stifter's Brigitta and the lesson of realism; MAAA1/2hlbach, Ranke, and the truth of historical fiction; regional histories as national history in Freytag's Die Ahnen; gender and nation in Louise von FranAAA1/2ois's historical fiction; theory, reputation, and the career of Friedrich Spielhagen; Wilhelm Raabe and the ong>Germanong> colonial experience; the poetics of work in Freytag, Stifter, and Raabe; Jewish identity in Berthold Auerbach's novels; Eugenie Marlitt's narratives of virtuous desire; the appeal of Karl May in the Wilhelmine Empire; Thomas Mann's portrayal of male-male desire in his early short fiction; and Fontane's Effi Briest and the end of realism. Contributors: Robert C. Holub, Brent O. Petersen, Lynne Tatlock, Thomas C. Fox, Jeffrey L. Sammons, John Pizer, Hans J. Rindisbacher, Irene S. Di Maio, Kirsten Belgum, Nina Berman, Robert Tobin, Russell A. Berman.Todd Kontje is professor of ong>Germanong> at the University of California, San Diego.