This thesis examines the nature of complicity and its relationship to narrative in the novels of W.G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro. The effects of atrocity have been addressed in a significant body of scholarship which focusses on victimhood and trauma: a strand of work identifying and examining representations of perpetrators is also emerging. However, comparatively little research exists on the representation of complicity , a central concern of both Sebald and Ishiguro, in literary texts. This thesis therefore seeks to address the ways in which complicity originates, and , drawing on the attempts to theorise witnessing and testimony conducted by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, the ways in which narrative may act to perpetuate or deny such complicities. The thesis examines complicity on three levels. Firstly, it identifies the ways in which the authors' choice of protagonists permits an examination of complicity. Both Sebald and Ishiguro employ narrators who occupy intermediate positions, being subject to history, but possessing sufficient agency to contribute to the discourses and structures that shape the historical forces out of which atrocity grows. The first use of first person narration also makes visible a second form of complicity, which is that of the protaginists' denials of culpability. Both writers are concerned with the way I which narrative may deny or obfuscate culpability in historical events, and their use of first person narrations allows them to explore this potential. Finally, I argue that both authors display an awareness that complicity may be entered into through the acts of reading and interpretation, and as a result they employ narrative form to encourage reflexive and critical modes of reading, which in turn promote engagement with narrative as an ethical mode of witnessing.

This dissertation presents research into the aesthetics of Christa Wolf's prose. As a post-World War II writer, Wolf sets out to practise in her prose a new aesthetic which rids itself of the modernist detachment from the object of discourse. Searching to involve herself as a writer in her art she initiates a humane aesthetic which ignores the ontological barrier between fictitious and real-life discourse. The relationship between the two discourses is explored by Jurgen Peterson in Erzahlsysteme: eine Poetik epischer Texte (1993) and Fiktionalitat und Asthetik: eine Philosophie det Dichtung (1996). Taking as my starting-point some of the theoretical considerations set out by Peterson, I analyse the narrators' frequent interventions from the time in which the text is being written in the context of Wolf's aesthetics. The risk inherent in disrupting a coherent fictional discourse with metafiction is, according to Petersen, that the reader will switch to the perception mode used for matters of fact. The three texts chosen for this study, Nachdenken uber Christa T. (1968), Sommerstuck (1989) and especially Kindheitmuster (1976), have sections which deliberately gravitate towards the genre of essayistic literature. The argument of the dissertation is that, although the narrative is subverted by these metafictional interventions, particularly by the profound moral concerns they embody, the construction of the texts proves sufficiently sophisticated to absorb the real-life content back into fiction. My dissertation focuses therefore on the narrative structure of Wolf's texts, attempting to trace back the overall aesthetic to the narrative techniques employed in the text. The desire to respond to the post-war loss of faith in humanity with an aesthetic which safeguards and enhances sensitivity towards the humane in readers is in itself admirable, even though it challenges the concept of fiction. The originality of Wolf's ambitious aesthetics is particularly striking when viewed in comparison to the aesthetics of Virginia Woolf and Jurek Becker, which incorporate traumatic experience in a rather different way. The method of comparative study is also employed to shed light on the question of where is Wolf is to be situated in the spectrum of contemporary writing styles.

This project examines the crucially informative role that masks and notions of masking have historically played in shaping western conceptions of identity. Specifically, it explores how this historical pattern is particularly transformative in the works of one of the early twentieth century’s most important writers, Hermann Hesse. Major elements of this development are illustrated by highlighting significant parallels between Hesse and the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, whose literary engagement with masks and identity are starkly similar to Hesse’s. Hesse’s works are commonly read as narratives of a ‘search for the Self’. However, very little scholarly attention is given to exploring what this concept of ‘Self’ actually means in Hesse’s works. By placing acute critical attention on the roles of masks in Hesse’s novels, this project reveals how Hesse’s literary portrayals of identity develop significantly from his first to his final novel (Peter Camenzind in 1904 and Das Glasperlenspiel in 1943). Importantly, the project illustrates how Hesse’s early literary depictions of masks and identity come from a deeply entrenched medieval conception of a ‘fixed’ Self, but, as his career progresses and his portrayals of the ‘Self’ develop, the rhetorical instrument of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Mask’ begins to inform Hesse’s literary representations of identity. This project illustrates how Hesse altogether transforms his portrayals of the ‘Self’ through this rhetorical device. In doing so, it reveals the pertinent role of masks in Hesse’s works and amplifies Hesse’s voice in a long historical dialogue regarding masks and identity.

Theodor Storm is regarded as a leading exponent of the Poetic Realism movement in nineteenth century Germany, and is also popular as an author renowned for his love of his native region of Schleswig-Holstein. This study aims to explore how the landscape depicted in Storm's narrative fiction contributes to the assessment of him and his intentions as a Poetic Realist author. After a summary of the concepts behind Poetic Realist writing and an investigation of the Novelle, its main vehicle, a selection of Novellen are analysed, incorporating works from Storm's early fiction and Marchen, deemed by many as direct descendants of Romantic prose, through to his last Novelle, regarded as one of the finest pieces of Poetic Realist writing. We contest hypotheses that Storm's early work is strongly founded in Romantic or Biedermeier writing, for both his ideologies and his narrative style are fundamentally different from those of his forebears. Though much criticised for producing mere "Bilderreihen", Storm handled themes uncharacteristic for the age, commenting on them beneath the surface of his idylls. We ascertain that the landscape plays a fundamental role in enabling him to write such tales accessible on two levels. As Storm's works mature, the themes in the early narratives are developed and Storm examines questions pertinent to the whole of mankind's existence. 'Unpoetic' topics are transformed; man's solitude and insignificance become blindingly apparent in the environment by which he is surrounded. The landscape symbolises the threats to his very being. The study concludes that Theodor Storm's own perceptions about literature concur with those popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century; but uniquely, the landscape by which he was surrounded enabled Storm to fulfil his own criteria and to develop into a Poetic Realist delving to depths explored by no other of his time.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

In assessing the special qualities of Fontane as a social novelist, it has been felt advisable to mention in some detail the influence of his formative years and the social experiences and impressions received during that lengthy portion of the author's life prior to the publication of his first novel at the age of sixty. The survey of Fontane's picture of society includes the aristocracy of town and country, the middle classes (with special reference to Jewish and professional circles), and a number of representative figures from the working folk. Fontane's political views will be analysed in order to determine his fundamental attitude to society and state, and to clarify the political references in his novels. The special social problem of marriage, in whicn the author was particularly interested, will be investigated in the light of Fontane's views stated both in the published works and in his private correspondence. Following an estimation of Fontane's personal values and philosophy of life, he will be brought into brief comparison with other authors and literary movements, and finally some distinctive features of his style and technique will be commented upon. No attempt has been made at completeness in the illustrations of chapters II, III, and IV; a number of representative examples have been selected from the novels which could, of course, be supplemented by many others. Similarly Chapter VIII has been limited in its scope. In a study of this type it has been found necessary to restrict this section to a series of brief indications. No 'footnotes' as such have been given, incidental comments and the authors of quotations being included in the main text, but a key to the titles and page-numbers of sources mentioned will be found at the end on pages i-xix. The figures in brackets in the body of the thesis refer to these notes.

This is a thesis in two parts, a novel and a critical project. Both are about Maria-Theresavon Paradis, a blind and possibly 'hysterical'pianist and composer, and Doctor Franz Anton Mesmer, the founder of Mesmerism, who temporarily managed to cure her with this controversial treatment. In the novel, The Cost of Light, Paradis's confessions to Mesmer allow me to show that her possible hysterical blindness arises from a complex cluster of motives, for example, a refusal to see, and too great a desire to witness, forbidden sights. In this way, the novel demonstrates the malleable nature of eighteenth-century hysteria, which, for Paradis, transforms itself constantly in relation to her psychosocial conditions and familial constraints. Her sudden blindness, her miraculous recovery of sight at Doctor Mesmer's hands and then its subsequent loss could thereforeallbe considered hysterical symptoms. The related critical project, 'Rapportand Subversion: Mesmer's Treatment of Paradis and Its Influence on the Fiction of E.T.A. Hoffmann'is divided into three chapters. 'Chapter 1: The Blind Musician'explores the nature of Paradis'spossibly hysterical blindness and suggests that,for her, blindness may well have had subversive and creative compensations. Her experiences are compared to those of the blind harpist, CharlottaSeuerling,and to those of Beethoven. 'Chapter 2: The Miracle Doctor'argues that the relationship between Mesmer and his famous patient and between othermesmerists and their subjects is one of power and control, reinforcing normativeeighteenth-century gender roles. It examines the effectiveness of Mesmerism in treating Paradis's blindness, and argues that her possible hysteria, and other factors, were potent subversive forces in undermining Mesmer's treatment. 'Chapter3: The Mesmerised Writer'establishes how E.T.A. Hoffmann's characters in'The Sandman','Councillor Krespel'and 'New Year's Eve Adventure'operate as paradigms for the Paradis/Mesmer relationship. This chapter also showshowHoffmann's awareness of Mesmerisminfluenced his short stories, 'Automata','The Magnetiser'and 'The Golden Pot.'

No description available.