New essays by leading scholars on major aspects of the most significant Austrian writer of the postwar generation. Since the death of Thomas Bernhard in 1989, the literary reputation of this complex and unique writer has risen to the point that he is now regarded as a major European figure. Bernhard emerged in the 1960s as one of Austria's major writers, challenging the popularity of such established writers as Heinrich Boell and Gunter Grass on the German literary scene. His idiosyncratic prose consists of a tragic-comic blend of themes such as suicide, madness, and isolation combined with highly satirical and histrionic invectives against culture, tradition, and society. As a skillful impresario of public scandals by means of verbal assaults upon Austrian elite culture, Bernhard also earned himself the epithet of UEbertreibungskunstler (artist of exaggeration). In this art of cultural and political provocation Bernhard remains unmatched to the present day. This volume of essays provides contributions by well-known critics that examine the most salient aspects of Bernhard's work, offering insights into literary strategies and public themes that made Bernhard one of Europe's masters of modern prose and drama. Essays examine Bernhard's complex artistic sensibility, his impact on Austria's critical memory, his relation to the legacy of Austrian Jewish culture, his representative value as Austria's prime literary export, and his cosmopolitanism and its significance forthe rapidly changing multicultural landscape of Europe. Matthias Konzett is associate professor of German at Yale University. He is the author of The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek (Camden House, 2000). Click here to view the introduction (PDF file 97KB)

New essays examine 20th-c. Austrian literature in relation to history, politics, and popular culture. 20th-century Austrian literature boasts many outstanding writers: Schnitzler, Musil, Rilke, Kraus, Celan, Canetti, Bernhard, Jelinek. These and others feature in broader accounts of German literature, but it is desirable to see how the Austrian literary scene -- and Austrian society itself -- shaped their writing. This volume thus surveys Austrian writers of drama, prose fiction, and lyric poetry; relates them to the distinctive history of modern Austria,a democratic republic that was overtaken by civil war and authoritarian rule, absorbed into Nazi Germany, and re-established as a neutral state; and examines their response to controversial events such as the collusion with Nazism, the Waldheim affair, and the rise of Haider and the extreme right. In addition to confronting controversy in the relations between literature, history, and politics, the volume examines popular culture in line with current trends. Contributors: Judith Beniston, Janet Stewart, Andrew Barker, Murray Hall, Anthony Bushell, Dagmar Lorenz, Juliane Vogel, Jonathan Long, Joseph McVeigh, Allyson Fiddler. Katrin Kohl is Lecturer in German and a Fellow of Jesus College, and Ritchie Robertson is Taylor Professor of German and a Fellow of The Queen's College, both at the University of Oxford.

New essays providing a comprehensive scholarly introduction to the great writer and thinker Canetti. The Bulgarian-born scholar and author Elias Canetti was one of the most astute witnesses and analysts of the mass movements and wars of the first half of the 20th century. Born a Sephardic Jew and raised at first in the Bulgarianand Ladino languages, he chose to write in German. He was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature for his oeuvre, which includes dramas, essays, diaries, aphorisms, the novel Die Blendung (Auto-da-Fe) and the long interdisciplinary treatise Masse und Macht (Crowds and Power). These works express Canetti's thought-provoking ideas on culture and the human psyche with special focus on the phenomena of power, conflict, and survival. Canetti'smasterful prose, his linguistic innovations, his brilliant satires and conceits continue to fascinate scholars and general readers alike; his challenging, genre-bending writings merge theory and literature, essay and diary entry.This Companion volume contains original essays by renowned scholars from around the world who examine Canetti's writing and thought in the context of pre- and post-fascist Europe, providing a comprehensive scholarly introduction. Contributors: William C. Donahue, Anne Fuchs, Hans Reiss, Julian Preece, Wolfgang Mieder, Sigurd P. Scheichel, Helga Kraft, Harriet Murphy, Irene S. Di Maio, Ritchie Robertson, Johannes G. Pankau, Dagmar C.G. Lorenz, Penka Angelova and Svoboda A. Dimitrova, Michael Mack. Dagmar C. G. Lorenz is Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Essays shedding light on the increasingly open cultural debate on the German past. Since unification in 1990, Germany has seen a boom in the confrontation with memory, evident in a sharp increase in novels, films, autobiographies, and other forms of public discourse that engage with the long-term effects of National Socialism across generations. Taking issue with the concept of "Vergangenheitsbewaltigung," or coming to terms with the Nazi past, which after 1945 guided nearly all debate on the topic, the contributors to this volume view contemporary German culture through the more dynamic concept of "memory contests," which sees all forms of memory, public or private, as ongoing processes of negotiating identity in the present. Touching on gender, generations, memory and postmemory, trauma theory, ethnicity, historiography, and family narrative, the contributions offer a comprehensive picture of current German memory debates, in so doing shedding light on the struggle to construct a Germanidentity mindful of but not wholly defined by the horrors of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Contributors: Peter Fritzsche, Anne Fuchs, Elizabeth Boa, Stefan Willer, Chloe E. M. Paver, Matthias Fiedler, J. J. Long, Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Cathy S. Gelbin, Jennifer E. Michaels, Mary Cosgrove, Andrew Plowman, Roger Woods. Anne Fuchs is Professor of Modern German literature and Georg Grote is Lecturer in German history, both at University College Dublin. Mary Cosgrove is Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh.

Devoted to collecting the finest Jewish writing from around the world, the Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World series consists of anthologies, by country, that are designed to present to the English-speaking world authors and works deserving international consideration. As a series, the books permit a broad examination of the international crosscurrents in Jewish thought and culture."" "Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria" presents a gathering of writers from several generations who have published a remarkable range of works in recent decades. The result is a diverse portrait of Jewish experience in Austria since the Second World War. Dagmar C. G. Lorenz has assembled an extraordinary roster of literary talents, ranging from authors born in the early decades of this century to writers born after the Shoah. The volume maps a complex tradition of Jewish discourse marked by a profound awareness of the literary past, by the failure of a long-anticipated Austrian-Jewish symbiosis, and by the unparalleled tragedy of the Shoah. It is a modern tradition that has made an essential contribution to Austria's literary history while remaining, in Lorenz's words, "distinct and unassimilated."