Sonntag, 30.10.2005
Kontje: German orientalisms
Kontje, Todd Curtis:
German orientalisms / Todd Kontje. - Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan Press, 2004. - 316 S.
ISBN 0-472-11392-5
US$ 35,00
Beschreibung
Todd Kontje's German Orientalisms offers a fresh examination of the role of the East in the German literary imagination, ranging from the Middle Ages to the present. In its wide historical sweep, this book offers important new insights into many of the most famous writers in the German language, from Goethe to Thomas Mann to Günter Grass.
Building on Edward Said's Orientalism -- which defined Orientalism as a form of Western knowledge directly linked to imperial power -- Kontje offers a more nuanced version as seen through the lens of German literature of the last thousand years.
Said's focus was on British and French Orientalists -- two nations with colonial interests in the East. Germany was different in that it had no stake in the Orient. Far from diminishing an Orientalist perspective, however, the absence of a German empire in the East produced a peculiarly German brand of Orientalism, one in which German writers alternated between identification with the rest of Europe and allying themselves with parts of the East against the West.
Above all, Kontje asks how German writers conceived of their place in "the land of the center" (das Land der Mitte) and how their literary works help to create the imagined community of the German nation. [Verlagsinformation]
Inhalt
Introduction: The Location of German Literature. 1
I. CRUSADERS, INFIDELS, AND THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 15
1. Wolfram's Parzival and the Making of Europe. 15
2. Early Modern Nationalism and the Ottoman Empire. 32
3. Baroque Orientalisms: Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus and Lohenstein's Arminius. 39
II. ROMANTIC ORIENTALISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EMPIRE. 61
1. Herder's Historicism. 64
2. Novalis: A Provincial Cosmopolitan. 83
3. The Bildung of the German Nation. 101
4. Linguistic Nationalism and the East. 105
5. Inventing Germanistik and Making Wolfram German. 111
6. Goethe's Orientalism: Between Essence and Irony. 118
III. FASCIST ORIENTALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS. 133
1. Mann, Baeumler, and Bachofen: The Dark Side of Romanticism. 133
2. Tiptoeing toward Democracy: Mann's Sexual Politics. 138
3. Symbolic Geographies on the Magic Mountain. 146
4. Botho Strauß: Apocalypse Now. 162
IV. THE NEAREST EAST. 177
1. Germany's Eastern Frontier. 177
2. Teutonic Knights, Prussian Patriots, Nazi Ideologues. 181
3. Eichendorff's Christian Soldiers. 188
4. At Home on the Border: Heimat, Nation, and Empire in Freytag's Poetic Realism. 196
5. Günter Grass and the Literature of Migration. 209
V. Conclusion: Toward a "Bastard" Literature? 225
1. Ozdamar's Hybrid Heroines. 228
2. Michael Roes's Postmodern Orientalism. 231
3. Coda: Literature in an Age of Cultural Studies. 237
Notes. 245
Works Cited. 277
Primary Literature. 277
Secondary Literature. 283
Index. 305
Autor
TODD KONTJE is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego.
Quelle: University of Michigan Press; Amazon; That Technical Bookstore.
Schlagwörter: Germanistik; Orientalismus; Literatur
German orientalisms / Todd Kontje. - Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan Press, 2004. - 316 S.
ISBN 0-472-11392-5
US$ 35,00
Beschreibung
Todd Kontje's German Orientalisms offers a fresh examination of the role of the East in the German literary imagination, ranging from the Middle Ages to the present. In its wide historical sweep, this book offers important new insights into many of the most famous writers in the German language, from Goethe to Thomas Mann to Günter Grass.
Building on Edward Said's Orientalism -- which defined Orientalism as a form of Western knowledge directly linked to imperial power -- Kontje offers a more nuanced version as seen through the lens of German literature of the last thousand years.
Said's focus was on British and French Orientalists -- two nations with colonial interests in the East. Germany was different in that it had no stake in the Orient. Far from diminishing an Orientalist perspective, however, the absence of a German empire in the East produced a peculiarly German brand of Orientalism, one in which German writers alternated between identification with the rest of Europe and allying themselves with parts of the East against the West.
Above all, Kontje asks how German writers conceived of their place in "the land of the center" (das Land der Mitte) and how their literary works help to create the imagined community of the German nation. [Verlagsinformation]
Inhalt
Introduction: The Location of German Literature. 1
I. CRUSADERS, INFIDELS, AND THE BIRTH OF A NATION. 15
1. Wolfram's Parzival and the Making of Europe. 15
2. Early Modern Nationalism and the Ottoman Empire. 32
3. Baroque Orientalisms: Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus and Lohenstein's Arminius. 39
II. ROMANTIC ORIENTALISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EMPIRE. 61
1. Herder's Historicism. 64
2. Novalis: A Provincial Cosmopolitan. 83
3. The Bildung of the German Nation. 101
4. Linguistic Nationalism and the East. 105
5. Inventing Germanistik and Making Wolfram German. 111
6. Goethe's Orientalism: Between Essence and Irony. 118
III. FASCIST ORIENTALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS. 133
1. Mann, Baeumler, and Bachofen: The Dark Side of Romanticism. 133
2. Tiptoeing toward Democracy: Mann's Sexual Politics. 138
3. Symbolic Geographies on the Magic Mountain. 146
4. Botho Strauß: Apocalypse Now. 162
IV. THE NEAREST EAST. 177
1. Germany's Eastern Frontier. 177
2. Teutonic Knights, Prussian Patriots, Nazi Ideologues. 181
3. Eichendorff's Christian Soldiers. 188
4. At Home on the Border: Heimat, Nation, and Empire in Freytag's Poetic Realism. 196
5. Günter Grass and the Literature of Migration. 209
V. Conclusion: Toward a "Bastard" Literature? 225
1. Ozdamar's Hybrid Heroines. 228
2. Michael Roes's Postmodern Orientalism. 231
3. Coda: Literature in an Age of Cultural Studies. 237
Notes. 245
Works Cited. 277
Primary Literature. 277
Secondary Literature. 283
Index. 305
Autor
TODD KONTJE is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego.
Quelle: University of Michigan Press; Amazon; That Technical Bookstore.
Schlagwörter: Germanistik; Orientalismus; Literatur
