Literary criticism
June 30, 2021
Christian Felix Weiße (1726-1804) is best known as a dramatist and influential children’s writer of the Enlightenment period. This is the first book to explore his singularly extensive output as a literary translator, investigating the conditions which allowed Weiße to become the most prolific German translator of English literature in the eighteenth century, a popular translator of French drama, and an influential editor and ‘entrepreneur’ of the translations of others. Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence, the study examines Weiße’s wide-ranging professional networks as a cultural mediator of European significance. Special attention is paid to his role in the German reception of Ossian, his introduction of English children’s...
December 18, 2020
Reading
creates imaginary worlds. Rather than merely contemplating this world, we
establish links between the fictional world and the environment we live in. At
the same time, the books we read form part of our daily lives, and contribute
to the creation of a universe of possible worlds we inhabit. Taking Possible
World Theory as a starting point, DeWald re-evaluates and overturns the assumed
hierarchical relationship between original text and its translation. Focusing
on the translations of Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka by Argentine writer Jorge
Luis Borges, the author considers why we insist on maintaining borders between
texts. DeWald examines marginal cases of translations and originals
(pseudo-translations and collaborative...
June 30, 2020
This study
examines how the literary works of Elisabeth Reichart, Charlotte Roche and
Elfriede Jelinek challenge normativity both in their engagement with gender and
sexuality and with aesthetic choices. The comparative analysis of texts
published over a twenty-year period provides insights into the socio-political
and cultural dynamics at the time of publication. It reveals the continuing
relevance of feminist authorial voices to the present day, challenging the stable,
normative understanding of feminism and feminist writing itself, and showing
how literature can function as a form of intervention that provides a
reflective space for readers to question norms in their own lives and to take
the initiative to change these norms....
August 9, 2019
How
has classical literature shaped culture, knowledge, the thinkable? What happens
when a canonical text is translated from his
gaze into her, and their, gaze(s)? These are some of
the questions Barbara Köhler pursues in her modern epic poem, Niemands Frau (2007), her response to The Odyssey.
Translated and re-imagined over the centuries, Homer’s tale found critical
resonance in intellectual traditions from Christianity through to Post-Colonialism.
Odysseus has been viewed as an ideal, reputedly using reason rather than force
to dominate, but in Niemands Frau Köhler
takes inspiration from Penelope to weave a text that challenges the rationalist
and patriarchal epistemological traditions to which the Odyssey contributes....
November 25, 2016
How can you fathom a bottomless abyss? How can you capture ineffable beauty in words? How do you narrate the master of all stories? These are the challenges that seasoned poet Konrad von Würzburg set himself when at the end of the 13th century he composed his account of the Trojan War from a multitude of sources. Konrad has long been recognized as an exceptionally self-conscious author who frequently reflects on the nature, status and function of poetry, and who at times appears more concerned with the sparkling surface of his discourse than with the events he narrates. Taking these observations as a starting point, this study presents the first comprehensive treatment of metapoetics in the Trojanerkrieg. Focusing on traditional...
July 1, 2016
Society and its Outsiders in the Novels of Jakob Wassermann takes a fresh look at Wassermann’s depiction of society and its mechanisms of exclusion, specifically those affecting the Jew, the woman, the child and the homosexual man. Wassermann’s extensive oeuvre has not, until
now, been considered as an attempt to portray German society at different historical stages, from the Biedermeier to the end of the Weimar Republic. At the same time, this analysis shows how Wassermann’s interest in outsider figures is intertwined with an interest in narrative technique and discusses how his perception of the world affects his depiction of character.
October 30, 2015
This volume of essays focuses on how poets approach reading as a notion and a practice that both inform their writing and their relationship to their readers. The nineteenth century saw a broadened and increasingly self-conscious concern with reading as an interpretive and political act, with significant implications for poets' individual practice, which they often forged in dialogue with other poets and artists of the time. Covering the 1830s to the late 1990s, a period rich in poetic innovation, the essays examine a wide range of authors and their diverse approaches to reading as inscribed in - and related to - creative writing, and articulate the many ways in which reading developed as an active engagement key to the critical thought...
March 27, 2015
Over the past four decades immigration to France from the Francophone countries of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) has changed in character. For much of the twentieth century, migrants who crossed the Mediterranean to France were men seeking work, who frequently undertook manual labour, working long hours in difficult conditions. Recent decades have seen an increase in family reunification - the arrival of women and children from North Africa, either accompanying their husbands or joining them in France. Contemporary creative representations of migration are shaped by this shift in gender and generation from a solitary, mostly male experience to one that included women and children. Just as the shift made new demands of the '...
February 1, 2012
Writing and Muslim Identity is a comparative study of Islam in contemporary German- and English-language literature. At a time when the non-Islamic world seems to be defining itself increasingly in contrast to the Islamic world, this literary exploration of Islam-related issues sheds new and valuable light on the cultural interaction between the Muslim world and 'the West'. Writing and Muslim Identity engages with literary representations of different versions of Islam and asks how travel and migration, the transcultural experiences of migrant and post-migrant Muslims, may have shaped the Islams encountered in today's Germany and Britain. With its comparative approach to 'cultural translations' as creative and challenging interactions...
January 1, 1999
Inaugural Lecture delivered on 10 June 1999 at the University of London Senate House.