This study of 1930s German fiction adds a new dimension to existing scholarship on the depiction of crowds in literature. Whereas previous surveys on the topic have predominantly focused on the crowd as a revolutionary phenomenon judged on the basis of class perspectives, or as a feature of mass society, this investigation deals specifically with reactions to the crowd in its incarnation as a manifestation of and symbol for political fascism. Drawing on a number of contemporaneous theoretical treatises on crowds and mass psychology, it seeks to demonstrate that war, extreme socio-political upheaval and the rise of Nazism produced intense multidisciplinary engagement with the subject among German-speaking intellectuals of the period, and examines the portrayal of crowds in works by selected literary authors in this context. Exploring the interplay between literature and concurrent theoretical works, the thesis asks how writers used specific possibilities of fiction to engage with the theme of the crowd at a time when the worth of art was often questioned by literary authors themselves. In doing so, it challenges the implication of earlier criticism that authors uncritically appropriated the findings of theoretical texts for fictional purposes. At the same time, it becomes clear that although some literary crowd portrayals support a distinction between the nature of theoretical and literary writing, certain crowd theories are as imaginative as they are positivistic. Extrapolating from textual comparisons, the thesis thus challenges the view held by some authors that knowledge produced by theoretical enquiry was somehow truer and more valuable than artistic responses to the politics of the age.

This thesis examines the depiction of the widow by men and women in novels and short stories written between 1842 and 1913. The representation of the widow is analysed in the context of dominant views about widowhood at the time, such as those expressed in the writings of politician and statesman, Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741-1796). These ideas are set out in chapter I. The first chapter also examines the social reality of widowhood in nineteenth-century Germany. In the first chapter of the thesis Hippel argues that real widows are superfluous beings and men’s second-hand goods, but they were also perceived by theologians and moralists of the time as a threat due to their ungoverned lust. Many nineteenth-century widows internalised the idea espoused by Hippel and felt alienated and invisible. In German fiction, however, male writers in the works discussed repeat the latter theory that once deprived of their husbands widows are sexually voracious. In the works written by men, the figure of the widow is generally presented as a dangerous sexual predator. Female authors, however, highlight the invisibility of the widow and portray her as a figure alienated from society and her family. Henriette Hanke is the first author to be examined in chapter II. Her novel, Die Wittwen (1842), portrays five widows, who range from the self-sacrificing Lucie von Gardemer, to the liberated and financially independent Frau von Kleist. Hanke depicts widowhood as a process of education for her two key widows, Lucie von Gardemer and Franzisca Weihland. They must learn to love the right man, and at the end of the story they revert from widowhood to marriage. Fourteen years later, the first version of Gottfried Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich (1854/55) was published. Chapter III explores the way in which Keller portrays the threatening sexuality of his widow Judith and emphasises her power to destabilise the narrator. Chapters IV and V also focus on the widow as a predatory and dangerous figure, as exemplified in works by Paul Heyse, Eduard Grisebach, C. F. Meyer and Arthur Schnitzler. In chapter VI Hedwig Dohm presents a contrast to the dominant representations of widowhood in her story Werde, die du bist! (1896). Dohm challenges prevalent stereotypes of the widow, though with limited success. Gabriele Reuter, the final author to be discussed, reverts to male stereotypes of the widow in her stories. This chapter thus shows that women writers are not always more positive, or original, in their representation of the widow. The thesis as a whole demonstrates the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the widow in nineteenth-century German fiction. She is a figure to be at best re-educated and at worst to be feared and guarded against. She is a cynical man-trap in Heyse’s and Grisebach’s stories, a murderess in Meyer’s story, and an incestuous mother in Schnitzler’s texts. Hanke and Dohm, themselves both widows, show from the inside what it is like to be a widow in such a society.

The thesis is concerned with three main problems: (1) The derivation of Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet from the Renaissance tradition (2) The problems inherent in Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet (3) The relationship between Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet and the style of his poetic works. These questions are treated chronologically in their respective relevance to each stage in Hoelderlin's development. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the poet's early poetry, his novel "Hyperion", and his aesthetic theory as reflected in the various versions of that novel and in the philosophical fragments; the second part deals with the drama "Empedokles" and the mature poetry. For the purpose of this essay, however, it seems more practicable to abandon the purely chronological order and to discuss separately each of the three problems mentioned. (1) Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet is based on the Greek Vates and the biblical Prophet. The importance of the classical and biblical traditions for Hoelderlin as well as the extent to which he was influenced by Klopstock and other German contemporaries have been stressed again and again; but the significance of the tradition linkng the centuries between antiquity and the 18th century has been neglected. This thesis attempts to fill the gap and to show that Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet is inconceivable without the gradual change in the cultural pattern brought about by the Renaissance. It it in the Renaissance that art (with philosophy) takes over part of the function formerly fulfilled by religion, that the inspired individual rather than the institution of the Church becomes the mediator between God and men, that the national community emerges from the international society of the Middle Ages, and that a transformation of the classical and Christian heritage takes place. All this is reflected in the Renaissance conception of the Poet as Vates and Prophet, who interprets history and brings a divine message to his people. From Boccaccio to Scaliger this conception occurs in all major Italian Renaissance works on poetic theory. Ronsard, as the first modern Poet-Vates, introduces it in France. In England Sidney expounds similar views, later to be realized in the personality and work of Milton. In Germany it is Hoelderlin's Suabian compatriot Weckherlin who emulates the example of Ronsard, while Opitz sums up the typical contemporary view of poetry in his standard German Renaissance Poetics. A century later Gottsched and Herder go back to Opitz for their interpretation of the sacred mission of poetry. The young Klopstock is influenced by Gottsched as well as by Milton. He, Herder, Schiller and the Suabian poets, humanists and pietists, hand on the tradition to Hoelderlin. The idea, however, that the Poet is a Prophet would not be understandable without certain philosophical conceptions which were also developed by the Renaissance. Plato's theory of the "furor poeticus", commented on and interpreted in a neo-platonic way by Marsilio Ficino, is taken over by Ronsard and Opitz and blends with Giordano Bruno's and Shaftesbury's re-interpretation of neo-platonism and these influences join with Leibniz's monadology to shape German aesthetics in the 18th century. The conceptions then current reach Hoelderlin through Herder, Schiller, and Jacobi's book on Spinoza, which contained extracts from Bruno and Leibniz. Thus for Hoelderlin - as for his generation - God is the supreme artist, Beauty the very essence of the universe, the human soul a spark of the divine, and the Poet, according to Shaftesbury "a second maker", creates, like God himself, through the Word, the sacred Logos. These philosophical concepts both supplement and contradict Hoelderlin's view of the Poet as a Vates and Prophet. Equipped with the Renaissance heritage Hoelderlin arrives in Jena, the centre of German classicism and the cradle of romanticism. The impact of Kant, Fichte, Goethe, Schiller and Schelling on Hoelderlin and the reflection in his own philosophical writings of his contacts with these leading figures of contemporary letters are discussed in a separate chapter. In Hoelderlin's aesthetic theory the Renaissance conception of the Poet has been developed up to the point where it passes into romanticism. In this, Hoelderlin's place in German literature corresponds to that of Goethe. It is true, there is a vast difference which critics have rightly stressed. It is, however, one of the advantages of seeing Hoelderlin in the light of the Renaissance tradition that, in spite of differences, he appears as the contemporary of Goethe, the chief representative of the belated German Renaissance. Just as Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet goes back to the Renaissance, so do many of his poetic themes, such as the parallels between Christ and Hercules, Christ and Bacchus, the invitation to the Greek Muses to visit Germany, the praise of the vernacular, his approach to nature and geography, etc. (2) Hoelderlin's conception of the Poet is full of problems. They become first manifest in "Hyperion". The hero of this novel, a reflection of Hoelderlin himself, is the Poet, who in sublime visions sees divine Beauty, and the Vates who wants to free his people and rebuild Greece. As Vates he fails. He attributes his failure to the fact that the age is not ripe for his idealism, but it is also due to the conception of the Poet-Vates itself. As a Poet Hyperion delights in the very act of experiencing life in its joyful as well as tragic aspects, life revealing itself to him as a rhythmic whole which he calls Beauty and which is but the projection of the rhythm of human emotions into the universe. But the universe does not obey the laws of the human heart, nor does history; a "theocracy" cannot be founded on Beauty as Hyperion believes; his gift for experiencing deeply the joys and woes of life does not enable him to rebuild a new society - in short the Poet's vision does not prove to be the message of a Vates and Prophet. In the moment when, at the end of the novel, Hyperion is at the height of his poetic powers, he knows least how to serve his fellow men. In "Empedokles" the problem of the Poet's function appears somewhat differently. The hero of the drama represents the highest form of genius the poet can conceive. He combines the "Genie" of the Storm and Stress period, Schiller's aesthetic artist, the mystical mediator between God and men, the Greek Titan, and it is also suggested that he is a kind of Christian saviour. This symbol of everything Hoelderlin worshipped in man has to die. It is in the various motivations of the death of Empedokles that Hoelderlin presents the problematical nature of genius. The most interesting point is the question of the guilt of genius. Empedokles is guilty of what is described in the thesis as pseudo-mystical approach to the Gods. The pseudo-mystical experience becomes linked with the problem of language, the very instrument of the Poet. In order to re-establish the right relationship between himself and the Gods, Empedokes has to die. But as he prepares for death he is once again re-united both with his people and with the Gods. It is at the expense of his life that he is allowed to be the Prophet who delivers a divine message unto his people. The end suggests that genius can be both, and almost at the same time, the culprit and the redeemer, a conception which Hoelderlin's theory of tragedy tries to justify. As regards the drama itself we are left with one the one hand the glorification of genius and on the other the dangers, the guilt, the tragic fate that go with genius. The problem of genius is also the main theme of Hoelderlin's mature poetry. It is by singing of genii that he evokes the vast panorama of his later elegies, odes and hymns.

Συγκριτική συντακτική ανάλυση του Παρακειμένου της Νέας Ελληνικής και των κυριοτέρων ρωμανικών και γερμανικών γλωσσών. / The present thesis is an analysis concerning the periphrases of the present perfect in Modern Greek, and in the main Romance and Germanic languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, English, German and Dutch. It consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I present the data concerning the formation and the uses of the present perfect in the aforementioned languages. I particularly insist on the fact that in some languages there is auxiliary selection. French, Italian, German and Dutch, on one hand, generally select the auxiliary verb “have” to form the periphrases of the present perfect of transitive verbs, whereas, they select the verb “be” to form the present perfect of unaccusative verbs. Moreover, two of these languages, French and Italian have participle agreement. The participle used in the formations of these periphrases agrees in gender and number with the subject of the phrase if the auxiliary verb “be” is used, whereas, it agrees with the object if the verb “have” is used, but only on condition that the object precedes the participle. This can occur mainly when the object is a pronoun. In the second chapter, I proceed to the syntactic analysis of the data. I look into Kayne’s (1993) analysis on auxiliary selection. Kayne, following Freeze (1992), supports that the syntactic analysis of the possessive “have” should be adopted for the auxiliary “have” as well. He believes that the only difference between the two constructions is the fact that the complement of the auxiliary “have” should be one appropriate for a participle. Moreover, Kayne (1993) supports that the two auxiliary verbs “have” and “be” are basically the same. “Have” is “be” with a locative. In this chapter I also present some additional, more recent views concerning the constructions of the periphrases of the present perfect, the ones of Iatridou (2007) and D’Alessandro (2010). In the third chapter, I look into participle agreement. I suggest that this kind of agreement is related to, and depends on the position of adjectives in each language. In languages like French and Italian the adjective is usually put after the substantive. As a result, participles only agree with the argument they characterize/determine, depending on the construction, if they are in a structural position which is compatible with the position of the adjective. In languages like German and Dutch, adjectives always precede substantives. However, participles never do so when they are part of a periphrasis of the present perfect. German and Dutch never show participle agreement. In Greek, on the other hand, the adjective can either precede or follow the verb. This seems to be the reason why participles in Greek always show agreement. Finally, in English, adjectives and consequently participles never show any kind of agreement due to the fact that they lack clitic morphology. Following Wasow (1977) and his analysis on verbal and adjectival participles, but also Kibort (2005), I support that past participles that show agreement constitute an intermediate participial category between the verbal and the adjectival ones. They seem to be “resultative” participles which act as verbs but bear adjectival features. I propose that it is possible that the function of these participles in the periphrases of the present perfect is either to produce or to reinforce the perfect of result. I conclude that Modern Greek is the only language, among the ones examined, that has unconditional participial agreement, and can produce two different kinds of the present perfect with most verbs, the perfect of experience, on one hand, and the perfect of result, on the other.

In light of often derogatory and unqualified assessments of Yiddish literature adapted from German narrative models, this thesis will propose a different approach to viewing these adaptations. Building on methodologies and frameworks of analyses developed in contemporary medieval scholarship, this thesis pushes for a re-assessment of this literature and suggests a flexible model of adaptation that views adaptation as a creative interaction between two texts. In response to unsatisfactory approaches to judaizing strategies found in Yiddish texts adapted from German literature, this thesis also suggests a different approach. Judaizing processes can either be part of overall processes of adaptation aimed at coding the text as Jewish within an overarching framework of renewed cultural specificity; or, they can function as translation principles by achieving equivalence with the original model. To illustrate both ends of this scale of adaptation, this thesis centres on two early modern Yiddish texts: the Kuhbukh (Verona, 1595) and the Siben weisen mainster bichel (Basel, 1602). The four chapters at the core of this thesis develop and apply extensive frameworks of literary analyses which enable us to rigorously assess the differing levels of adaptations (translation and Wiedererzählen) of both texts. This thesis pushes for a future reassessment of other popular Yiddish narratives adapted from German models. This could ideally be achieved by a positioning of each individual Yiddish text based on German narratives on the proposed scale of adaptation. This should be backed by verifiable methodologies and analyses devoid of unjustifiably dismissive opinions. This would consequently move scholarship towards structured, methodological analyses of early Yiddish secular literature.

This thesis demonstrates the aesthetic impact of crisis on Ingeborg Bachmann's late verse and prose. It examines poetic drafts written during a period of personal breakdown in the 1960s, which have largely been received as documents of personal suffering, and identifies these texts as a radical stage of writing that was to prove formally significant for Bachmann's development of the prose "Todesarten"-Projekt. This thesis draws on the new material made available with the publication of these poetic drafts to chart the genesis of Bachmann's acclaimed late oeuvre. By selecting and grouping lyric fragments, the thesis defines recurrent features in this verse and accounts for the texts as a body of writing that forms a radical, yet undocumented, part of this oeuvre. In terms of both their form and of their content, the fragmentary drafts are shown to reflect new engagement with aspects of experience conventionally excluded from High Art. In light of Bachmann's growing preoccupation with the need for aesthetic engagement in the post-war era, close readings reveal how she set about taking her subjective suffering as a basis for a critique of the social order. The thesis outlines how, during the 1960s, Bachmann pioneered a symptomatic expressive mode that - in the disrupted form of the writing - found an indirect means of manifesting the wider origins of subjective disturbance. The ambiguous aesthetic status of these poetic drafts, which were never finished by Bachmann, is related to an inability to establish structural distance from crisis in lyric form. Building on its readings of the poetic drafts, the thesis traces Bachmann's prose experimentation with the same motifs. It identifies how, ultimately, the prose medium enabled the author to resolve problems of aesthetic form raised in the verse. Parallels with the work of other writers and thinkers illuminate the development of a reflexive mode where sophisticated aesthetic strategies enable the oblique expression of cultural critique.

This thesis examines the creation of character in the work of Theodor Fontane. Although he is repeatedly praised as a great writer of human character, there is no comprehensive analysis of how Fontane's characters work. This thesis is intended to fill this surprising gap in Fontane research. Its analyses do not focus on the author-text interaction as many traditional critical approaches do, but instead look at what takes place between the text and the reader. The first section, entitled 'Character in Theory', has two chapters presenting my concept of literary character. It draws on the findings of cognitive studies, including formerly neglected aspects such as affective reading and empathy. The second section, 'Character in Practice', contains four chapters. Chapter three demonstrates how our emotions can contribute to our understanding and what role is played by empathy. Chapter four shows the active role readers are required to play when putting together information about characters in Fontane's polyphonous novels. Chapter five focuses on character speech, and chapter six asks to what extent Fontane's characters can be seen to develop. The third section, 'Character in Context', takes a less hermeneutic approach. Chapter seven asks what our expectations of Realist characters are and how these influence our reading of Fontane. Chapter eight examines how our access to these characters has changed compared to the author's contemporary readership. Chapter nine presents an excursus, looking at the author's development from renditions of 'real' people to fictional characters. The last section compares this author's creations to the tentatively Modernist characters of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. My findings show that Fontane's characters demand and support a more active reading than Realism is usually given credit for. They suggest that the concept of Realist characters as largely descriptive creations needs to be examined critically.

This study provides a precise definition of the term 'Kafkaesque' by enriching literary criticism with scientific theory and practice, including an experiment on readers' responses to Kafka. Dictionary definitions justify taking the term back to its textual origins in Kafka's works, and the works can fruitfully be analysed by investigating how readers engage with them through cognitive processes of imagination. Modern scientific developments posit that vision, imagination, and consciousness should be conceived of not in terms of static pictorialism – reducible to the notion of 'pictures in the head' – but in terms of enaction, i.e. as an ongoing interaction with the external world around us. Most traditional nineteenth-century Realist texts are based on pictorialist assumptions, while Kafka's texts evoke perception non-pictorially and are therefore more cognitively realistic. In his personal writings, Kafka wrestles with problems entailed by pictorialist conceptions of vision, imagination, and the function of language, and comes to enactivist solutions: evocation of perception that does not result in painting static tableaux with words. In his fictional works, Kafka correspondingly evolves a cognitively realistic way of writing to evoke fictional worlds that directly engage the cognitive processes of their readers; Der Proceß is a prime example of the 'Kafkaesque' text and reading experience, defined by being compelling yet simultaneously unsettling. Modulations in narrative perspective and evocation of emotion as enactive also contribute to the experience of the 'Kafkaesque' as compelling; yet Kafka's texts simultaneously unsettle by preventing straightforward emotional identification with the protagonists, and destabilising deep-rooted concepts of selfhood as singular and unified. The theoretical discussion of the 'Kafkaesque' experience as compelling yet unsettling is complemented and refined by an experiment testing readers' responses to a short story by Kafka. The term 'Kafkaesque realism' denotes Kafka's compelling yet unsettling non-pictorial evocation of perception of the fictional world. Kafkaesque realism falls into the broader category of 'cognitive realism', which provides a framework for analysing fictional texts more generally.