This thesis examines the woman singer and her song as a literary motif in French and German prose fiction between 1790 and 1848. In the form of selected case studies, I establish how, for some authors of this period, the singer constituted an important cipher for female artistic empowerment. Although substantial research on the cross-fertilization between music and literature exists, this specific motif has so far received very little attention in Comparative Literature studies. Additionally, literary critics have not previously explored the potential of the woman singer beyond the stereotypes associated with woman and song. By outlining the sociocultural background of singers at the time in chapter 2, and the theoretical context of idealized female song in chapter 3, I first show the strong ideological dimension of the singer as a character of ambivalence. I then investigate how literature responded to this theme, and how key authors developed the character as a reflection on aesthetic ideals pertaining to female musicality, and as a potentially subversive, empowered figure of female song performance. In chapter 41 examine the importance of early singer archetypes created by Goethe and Madame de Stadl, both of whose visions of musically inspired artistic genius paved the way for subsequent literary treatments of the singer and her increasing professionalism and artistic agency. In Chapter 5 I show to what extent marginalized authors like Caroline Fischer wrote explicitly against the cliche of the musical feminine ideal, proposing different views on female agency through art, whereas in chapter 7 I demonstrate how women authors of the July Monarchy period, such as Taunay, Sand, Ulliac and Desbordes-Valmore wrote strong narratives revolving around the life and genius of the prima donna singer. On the other hand, in chapter 6 I show that, although couching their narratives in seemingly more traditional, patriarchal imagery, male authors like Hoffmann, Balzac and Berlioz implicitly criticized the idealism associated with both music and woman and looked for narrative ways to portray the woman singer as an artist who maintains autonomy and integrity. My conclusion emphasizes that through their unique treatment of the woman singer,authors contributed to a complex, continuous discourse on woman and music which went beyond the stereotypical nature of cultural and aesthetic paradigms of female song

This thesis examines the novels of Guney Dal and represents the first attempt to engage with all of his works in detail. Hitherto it is principally the first two of his novels - those that most easily fit into the dominant generation-based patterns of reception - that have been discussed by critics in their excursions into the field of 'migrant' literature in Germany. I show that this has obscured the variety and experimentation of his work. The novels are introduced and discussed in chronological order, allowing the continuities of Dal's writing project to come to the fore. My examinations of Dal's novels are based on close readings of the individual texts, with an awareness of the multiple wider contexts within which these works exist. The thematic substance of Dal's novels has remained largely constant during the course of his career. However, he has approached this material through a variety of narrative styles and forms: from the didactic socialist realism of Wenn Ali die Glocken lduten hart, to the modernist streamof- consciousness narration of EuropastrafJe 5, the postmodern metafiction of Der enthaarte Affe and Eine kurze Reise nach Gallipoli, through to the historical novel Teestunden am Ring. The latest work, Kii~iik <g> Adznda Biri, fuses the workerist focus of the early works with his experimentation with postmodernism. Dal has never shied away from stretching the' boundaries of his narrative repertoire. The later, more experimental, novels retain a political edge while the early works already show indications of Dal's willingness to experiment as a writer. This. thesis will demonstrate that his fiction operates on this very tension between social commentary and literary experimentation.

This thesis examines the importance of sartorial detail in fiction by German women writers of the nineteenth century. Using a methodology based on Judith Butler’s gender theory, it examines how femininity is perceived and presented and argues that clothes are essential to female characterisation and both the perpetuation and breakdown of gender stereotypes. Based on extensive research into the history of dress including historical studies, fashion journals and conduct books, the thesis indicates how clothes were scripted for bourgeois women in nineteenth-century Germany. Women were expected both to observe the expensive dictates of fashion and to prove themselves morally superior. Arranged chronologically, this thesis analyses how this paradox is approached by female authors. It concludes that the revolutionary spirit of the 1840s was evident in the ways in which Louise Aston (1814-1871) and Fanny Lewald (1811-1889) portrayed dress, although both rely on sartorial traditions. ‘Natural’ beauty is at the centre of their characterisation, but the ‘natural’ is shown, not necessarily consciously on the part of the authors, to be an achievement. This is also true in the didactic works of Eugenie Marlitt (1825-1887) who surrounds her ‘natural’ protagonists with women who mis-perform their gender by dressing ostentatiously. Progressive writers at the end of the century are more direct in their treatment of the dress paradox. Such authors as Hedwig Dohm (1831-1919) and Frieda von Bülow (1857-1909), create heroines who feel vulnerable and awkward because of the pressure to be sexually attractive. This thesis concludes that dress is used in different ways to show how the dictates of fashion correspond to the dictates of patriarchal society; how sartorial details literally and metaphorically shape women; and how female writers accentuated the way dress functions as a means of oppression or attempted to overlook dress as a way of emphasising other feminine attributes.

The starting-point of my thesis is a key line from Bernhard's drama Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige: 'Die Existenz ist wohlgemerkt immer / Ablenkung von der Existenz'. The theme of diversion from existence, the notion that we live to construct an existence that actually diverts us from life's shortcomings, is pivotal to much of Bernhard's work. With the novel Auslöschung as my point of focus, I demonstrate that this theme of existential diversion informs not only the novel's subject matter but also its rhetoric and narrative style. Critics have typically failed to shed much light on the obvious hallmarks of Bernhard's narrative style (such as repetition, italicisation and the reluctance to pronominalise). Preferring to focus on thematic issues, commentators have paid scant attention to Bernhard's idiosyncratic narrative style. Embarrassed by his difficulty as an author, his English translators have even sought to normalise his texts for the sake of readability. I aim to redress the balance: to suggest that Bernhard's contribution to German literature lies as much in how he writes as in what he writes about. It is precisely these difficult rhetorical features that make him such an important and original voice. I show that the narrative thrust of Auslöschung is deliberately distorted, impeded and retarded by the author's rhetorical devices. The slowing-down of the reading process serves to foreground and recontextualise the words and idiomatic usages - the linguistic tools - chosen by the novel's speakers. Against a theoretical background of Nietzsche and Richard Rorty, I argue that Bernhardian rhetoric highlights the contingency and arbitrary nature of the linguistic world into which his speakers are born. I conclude that the project of disinheritance undertaken by the novel's narrator is partly linguistic: he rejects inherited language games and seeks to redescribe the world in which he finds himself.

The study offers a close reading of bed scenes in Kafka’s texts and analyses their semantics and their function on both the first and the secondary level of fiction. The bed is initially seen as a motif of space, then as a metaphor of the body, and finally as a chiffre for Kafka’s writing itself. The dissertation shows that Kafka’s beds can not only be linked to the widely discussed topics of power, guilt and desire in Kafka’s works, but also represent highly subversive elements within Kafka’s oeuvre. While the close reading of texts is at the centre of this study, it also makes productive use of theories by Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. The study traces the meaning of beds through a cross-reading of Kafka’s literary texts and personal writings. The aim here is not to naïvely combine plots and biography but to understand diary entries and letters as already fictionalised writings. The emphasis is on the different contexts in which beds appear, the different ways in which they can be read, and similarities between texts in order to show coherence between texts and the development of a single motif which allows us to read Kafka’s oeuvre not only for meaning, but also for intratextuality and interpretive ‘links’ contained in the texts themselves. The final outlook leaves the bed behind and promotes a playful reading of Kafka (which will be shown to be indirectly suggested in many of his texts) as well as an understanding of interpretation that aims to be close to the original but makes appropriate and creative use of theory in order to communicate with a text via another text.

The phenomenon of laughter in early modern narrative texts is central to literary and cultural history. Particularly rich sources of laughter are early modern collections of German secular short prose narrative, known as ‘Schwanksammlungen’ (1555-1565) that were read for entertainment and pleasure. Such comic (anecdotal) tales, narrated in ways that appear to reproduce the language used by ordinary people, offer literary historians a deeper insight into contemporary understanding and appreciation of laughter in literature. This thesis offers a fresh reading of the motif of laughter in Jörg Wickram’s Rollwagenbüchlein (1555), which may be regarded as the epitome of this type of literature. This study considers laughter as an important key for interpreting the Rollwagenbüchlein, and explores what a close reading of scenes featuring laughter can tell us about Wickram’s narrative technique in his collection. It principally investigates to what extent the inclusion of explicit references to laughter adds to the Rollwagenbüchlein in ways that exceed comic functionality, on the basis of which a more nuanced reading of the text as a whole may be undertaken. It examines the extent to which this collection evinces a broader thematic interest in laughter and related phenomena – which provides further insight into early modern cultures of laughter. The main contention of this thesis is that Wickram capitalises on the social and emotional significance of laughter in order to flesh out his portrayal of everyday life, thereby also illuminating ideas about laughter that are irreducible to norms. Laughter is read as a revealing expression of urban mores and mentalities in mid-sixteenth-century Germany. Such a reading allows us to trace how burgher attitudes to laughter helped to shape German early modern conceptions of society, psychology, and life in general. This study falls into two parts, the first of which tackles the Rollwagenbüchlein’s portrayal of laughter’s social significance (chapters two ‘laughter and social processes’ and three ‘laughter and religious practice’), and the second - its emotional-psychological dimension (chapters four ‘laughter and emotionality’ and five ‘laughter and rationality’).

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