This thesis proposes a new view of space in Theodor Fontane’s writing as both a mode of literary expression and an object of literary inquiry: space serves a poetic function and is a thematic concern. The research draws on theories of literary space which focus on spatial structures and topographies, as well as those which provide critical tools for analysing individual passages of description, especially focalisation, which elucidates the influence of the viewing figure in the text. Significantly, the subjective experience of a perceptive observer is central to Fontane’s conception of aesthetic processes, and as a result, an analysis of spatial representation often uncovers reflexive discourses on art, its function and value. On the basis of this insight, this study provides new readings of a range of texts, including less well-established and non-fictional works, as well as recognised masterpieces. In Fontane’s local travelogues, the Wanderungen, the poetic function of space is rare, while many passages reflect on the environment’s potential significance. The early novels explore spatial representation as a means of constructing textual symbolism. Spatial representation in Vor dem Sturm functions as a strategy of relativisation; in Schach von Wuthenow and Graf Petöfy topographies and pregnant descriptions serve as commentaries on characters’ levels of awareness. The mature novels Irrungen Wirrungen and Unwiederbringlich explore the sources and practical implications of reading objects in the world as signs. Space retains its formal role, but the represented figural experience of the novels’ worlds becomes a vehicle for reflexive analysis of the world’s perceived meanings. Similarly, in Der Stechlin different types of relationships with exterior reality are expressed spatially, and, as elsewhere, the capacity for aesthetic appreciation is represented positively. This entails and indeed produces critical distance towards modernity: isolated Stechlin is a locus of poetry, a testament to literature’s importance and vitality.

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Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2007

Zugl.: Augsburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.

Le présent travail propose une interprétation psychanalytique de l’œuvre de l’écrivain réaliste allemand Theodor Fontane (1819 1898). À la lumière de la théorie freudienne et des thèses de Béla Grunberger sur le narcissisme, nous montrons ce que sont les ressorts et les enjeux inconscients de la création littéraire, chez cet auteur, laquelle, dans son principe, reproduit le schème de la position fantasmatique régressive que ménageait la grande passion ludique de l’enfant, le jeu de cache cache selon un mode spécifique. Partant du constat de la structure obsessionnelle des romans, notre étude met en évidence, dans un premier livre, l’existence, « sous » la fable sociale récurrente de la liaison amoureuse illicite, sanctionnée (adultère et relations équivalentes), d’un singulier scénario s’articulant autour de la dynamique du « pseudo Œdipe », que décrit Grunberger (procédure d’évitement, à des fins de régression), et du mécanisme de la défense masochique. L’analyse de ce « mythe personnel » (Mauron), comme situation dramatique interne, nous amène à dégager les traits particuliers des éléments constitutifs de la personnalité psychique de Fontane (imagos et instances), puis à établir la genèse de sa position « pseudo œdipienne » et à faire ressortir le rapport qui la lie au processus de création (« rétablissement narcissique »). Les résultats acquis sont passés au révélateur de la vie de l’écrivain. Dans un second livre, nous nous penchons, tour à tour, sur les divers aspects essentiels de l’œuvre, réexaminés sous le nouvel éclairage apporté : fonctionnalité de l’ambivalence, conception du réalisme « poétique » (transfigurateur), recherche de la conciliation des principes contraires, écriture comme la pratique d’un jeu de cache cache (questions du dialogisme, de la stratégie narrative, du symbolisme). La dernière partie est consacrée à l’étude de la problématique cardinale de la régression narcissique, à laquelle tout mène, ici : instrumentalisation du complexe de la faute et de la sanction, à visée autodestructrice, dans une tension vers la mort fantasmée comme le retour à l’état de félicité du séjour au sein originel. / This study offers a psychoanalytical interpretation of the works of Theodor Fontane (1819 1898), the German realist writer. In the light of the Freudian theory and of Béla Grunberger’s theses on narcissism, we show the unconscious motivations which gave rise to this author’s literary creation and what is at stake in this process for him. The act of writing is based here on the principle of reproducing the scheme of the fantastical regressive position which was generated by Fontane’s strong passion as a child for the game of hide and seek, which he played in his own specific way. Considering the obsessive structure of his novels, in our first book we demonstrate the existence — “beneath” the ever present social dictum of the forbidden love affair that is always to be punished (adultery and similar relationships) — of a particular scenario revolving around the dynamic of the “pseudo Oedipus”, as described by Grunberger (avoidance procedure aiming at regression) and the mechanism of masochistic defense. The analysis of this “personal myth” (Mauron), as an inner dramatic situation, leads us, first, to unearth the specific features of the elements which make up Fontane’s psychic personality (imagoes and agencies), and then to establish the genesis of his “pseudo oedipal” position and to highlight its link with the creative process (“narcissistic restoration”). Our results are substantiated through the writers’s biography. In the second book we deal with the essential aspects of Fontane’s work, which we re examine thanks to what we have brought to light: the functionality of ambivalence, the conception of transfigurating “poetic” realism, the attempt to reconcile opposite principles and writing as a game of hide and seek (dialogism, narrative strategy, symbolism). The last part of our study is devoted to the cardinal issue of narcissistic regression to which everything leads: mainly the instrumentation of the complex of guilt and retribution with a self destructing aim in a tropism towards death fantasized as a return to the original state of bliss in the womb.

This thesis focuses on the anachronistic poacher-hero figure in late nineteenth-century German literature. Historian Hobsbawm has suggested that the symbolic endurance of "noble robber" figures (of which we can view poacher-heroes as a subset) takes place in an ideal imaginary "stripped" of the "local and social framework" (2000, 143). My thesis shows, in multiple examples across multiple genres, that in fact the poacher-hero is uniquely available for re-contextualization and renewal of social relevance, even under changed social and economic circumstances. The poacher-hero is not only a device for making statements about the past, but also for expressing claims on the future. It is perhaps this dynamism that makes the poacher-hero excellent carrier for different kinds of social critique as well. In my first chapter, I give a brief historical overview of the period and the motif. In the second chapter, I show how the poacher and his rural context are brought into contact with urban, imperial themes. In the chapter I read two novels, Der verlorene Sohn (The prodigal son, 1884-1886) and Quitt (Even, 1890), and the play Waldleute (Forest people, 1896) thematically to show how upward social mobility is associated with and adapted to the poacher figure. In the third chapter of the thesis, I examine narrative strategies and their employment in the construction of a socially critical viewpoint in Der verlorene Sohn and Quitt. I show how both high and low literary works, intended and written for different audiences, achieve similar results in their positioning of the poacher-protagonist through different narrative structures. This convergence shows the malleability of the societal frame for the poacher-hero. Finally, in the fourth chapter, I show regional adaptations of the motif, by examining different versions of a folk ballad "Das Jennerweinlied" ("The Jennerwein song"). This thesis furthermore shows how study of a motif can be used to bring together a diverse group of roughly contemporary texts. Viewing these texts in relationship with one another brings into question the scholarly focus on certain texts at the expense of others. / text

Universiẗat, Diss., 1999--Konstanz. / Gedr. Ausg. im Verl. Der Andere Verl., Bad Iburg.

Univ., Diss.--Oxford.

This thesis identifies strategies of queer/irony in the writings of Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine, Theodor Fontane, and Oscar Wilde. Key to the understanding of irony is Friedrich Schlegel's re-evaluation of the concept. The thesis establishes an approach to the multifaceted concept of irony and identify key concepts of queer theory. The focus, however, is close reading. First, Lord Byron's epic satire Don Juan is read with regards to the interplay of narrative strategies and the depiction of gender, homoeroticism and the concept of the child. Furthermore, reviews published at the time of the publication of Don Juan are examined: Why did the reviewers reject the work so violently? Second, in Heine's Buch der Lieder we find ironic strategies that Richard Rorty subsumed into the concept of 'final vocabularies.' By acknowledging the formulaic nature of language in general and Romantic tropes in particular, Heine succeeds in subverting a heteronormative discourse on love and desire. Heine's Reisebilder – 'Die Reise von München nach Genua' and 'Die Bäder von Lucca' – depict the limits of queer/irony: Where meaning is fixed, as in the case of the Platen polemic, irony loses its propensity to contain multitudes. Third, Theodor Fontane's novels of adultery are read against the background of irony as established through a Schlegelian reading of Frau Jenny Treibel and a queer reading of Ellernklipp. The novels Unwiederbringlich and Effi Briest question notions of truth and map the danger of knowledge. At the core of this chapter lies the notion of 'knowledge management,' a strategy closely related to irony. The figure of the courtier Pentz in Unwiederbringlich becomes a harbinger of dangerous, queer knowledge similar to the way Crampas' use of Heine quotations negotiates sexually suggestive knowledge in Effi Briest. In a final step, the aforementioned queer/ironic strategies are employed to read texts by Oscar Wilde. Are the strategies as inferred in the other chapters valid for Wilde's writings as well? We find that, in a time where homoerotic behaviour was heavily sanctioned, ironic writing had become a liability. Wilde's ironies are too opaque for the reader: They have become a movement where nobody is allowed to 'play along'.