No description available.

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This thesis centres on texts by contemporary authors Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, a Turkish-German writer, and Leila Sebbar, an Algerian-French writer. Through these texts, it explores the impact of postcolonial and labour migration on contemporary French and German cultures in terms other than postcolonial hybridity or intercultural dialogue, by following a methodology drawn from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of minor literature and from broader aspects of Deleuze's ontology of difference.

Long and erroneously deemed a writer in the tradition of bourgeois realism, the novelist Martin Mosebacb (* 1951) has in recent years been catapulted to the forefront of the German literacy scene, winning Germany's most prestigious literary prize, the Georg-Buchner-Preis, in 2007 and being heralded by many (mostly conservative) newspaper critics as one of the most elegant and powerful writers of the day_ Whilst there has been a fervent debate about the author's anti-modem and catholic credentials, neither the authors' advocates nor detractors have offered anything more than a superficial analysis of his substantial body of literary texts. This study is the first to look at Mosebach's novelistic oeuvre. It offers both a survey of his novels and a particular focus on the aesthetics of play that has animated his work since the very beginning of his career. In the early 19805 when the reception of literature in Germany was still very much guided by the paradigm of modernity and political litterature engagee, Mosebach not only flaunted his (then) unfashionable love for tradition and aesthetic form but turned it into an instrument of satire. Behind the outer, realistic settings of the texts and thus beneath their literal surface, many of Mosebach's narrators fabricate absurd fantasies of historical continuity. These are invoked purely by aesthetic means, by counter• intuitive allegories which are embedded in complex formal compositions and are conceived as hide•and•seek games with the reader. Mosebach deploys these absurd scenarios to formulate his cultural criticism in a grotesquely distorted way and provokes the critical reader's suspicion by playing with politically incorrect taboos (or blasphemy). In this study, I uncover these meticulously crafted subtexts as well as the author's extensive formal play with leitmotifs and symmetries which takes on a dynamic of its own. Thereby, the mannerist nature of Mosebach's transformations of reality comes to the fore. Whilst the author self•ironically foregrounds many of his conservative views put forward in his essays, not least his defence of the old Roman Liturgy, he consistently subjugates them to the aesthetics of (grotesque) play. Whilst politically incorrect innuendoes and satire provide much of the novels' appeal, ] conclude that the real provocation may lie in the fact that the modern reader's customary search for deeper meaning (be it political, sociological or psychological), is frustrated. This holds in different ways for both the early and the most recent novels. Finally, I suggest that Mosebach may require a reader who is willing to assess his novelistic work by aesthetic criteria alone.

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Botho Strauß, source for polemic and target of vitriol over three decades, proposes an unsettling understanding of the poetic in his prose works, from his earliest writing to most recent publications. The thesis contends that this understanding of the poetic is deeply indebted to the late thought of Martin Heidegger: it investigates the nature of the debt, highlighting Strauß’ adoption and adaptation of ideas central to the philosopher, including his thinking on the work of art, technology, language and poetry. The body of the thesis examines Strauß’ views through detailed exegeses of Beginnlosigkeit, Wohnen Dämmern Lügen and Fragmente der Undeutlichkeit, while drawing extensively on other works and writing. The readings identify and elucidate a number of key terms critical to Strauß’ proposed poetic. Underpinning these terms, the thesis contends, and bound to the understanding of the poetic, is an ontological concern for philosophical truth derived from Heidegger. The thesis concludes that far from a retreat by Strauß into obscurantist mysticism and resignation from a putative cultural, social and political collective, accusations repeatedly levelled at him and here grouped under the rubric of fatalism, Strauß offers in and through his works a dynamic engagement with this conception of truth, which the thesis hypothesises as a poetics of dwelling.

Text in German / Classics and Modern European Languages / M.A. (German)

Text in German / Classics and Modern European Languages / M.A. (German)

Ingeborg Bachmann’s recurrent references to the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya have frequently been noted, but have so far never been investigated. After outlining, in chapter one, Bachmann’s references to Goya in her thesis on Wittgenstein as well as in the Franza-Fragment and in her only novel Malina, this thesis sets out to highlight the text-image relation between Bachmann’s novel Malina and Goya’s series of murals which are known as the so called „Black Paintings“. Chapter two focuses on the importance of intertextuality and intermediality in Bachmann’s novel and the importance of quotation for the female narrator, who relies on intertextual and intermedial references to express her traumatic experiences. After an introduction into the aesthetics of Goya, in chapter three, chapters four and five examine the text-image relation between Goya’s painting El Perro Semihundido and the first chapter in Bachmann’s novel. The double perspective contained in El Perro, of the subjective expression of the dog’s longing for rescue and the objective futility of this hope as expressed by the dog’s positioning against the abstract background setting, is transferred onto the female narrator and her longing to be rescued through love. Chapter five especially focuses on the (problematic) semantic shifts which occur in the course of this transformation from an abstract representation in the painting to the depiction of concrete and personalized experiences in the text. Chapter six investigates the correlations between Bachmann’s dream chapter and the aesthetics of Goya’s murals, and asks to what extent Bachmann succeeds in transferring the main motifs in Goya’s images into literary form. Chapter seven explores the similarities and media-specific differences in the strategies deployed for depicting madness, violence and destruction in Bachmann’s text and in Goya’s murals and his series of prints on the Desasters of War. Bachmann’s novel Malina shows an extraordinary richness in intertextual and intermedial references. Analysing the explicit as well as implicit references to Goya’s late works in the novel this thesis addresses one area on Ingeborg Bachmann which has not been researched in detail so far.

Bibliography: leaves vii-xxiii / xxiii, 342 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of German, 1990