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<p> In the mid 1920s, reflecting the concerns of the "<i>Sprachkrise </i>", Ludwig Wittgenstein and Franz Kafka composed writings deeply concerned with language's ability to express human thought. In his <i>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i>, Wittgenstein attempted to draw the boundary of meaningful language. During the same period, Kafka developed his thoughts on language and ethics in his <i>Oktavhefte</i>. I compare these works, showing that they share an understanding of language as a domain bound within the physical world and incapable of expressing our spiritual being. Presenting itself as rigorous philosophical writing, Wittgenstein's <i> Tractatus</i> constantly reminds its reader of the limitations of its own logical and philosophical language by claiming itself to be "nonsense" and only a ladder the reader should climb and get rid of. Kafka, without constructing rigorous logical arguments, composed a critique demonstrating the unnaturalness of natural language and showing that its poetic nature lets language transcend its own boundaries.</p>

The dissertation undertakes a loosely chronological examination of Goethe's chief prose and poetic works in four areas of scientific inquiry: geology, botany, anatomy, and meteorology. Through a comparison of the prose essays and thematically related poems, it portrays the evolving relationship between prose and poetry in his scientific writings, explores the nature and scope of his programmatic reflections in regard to scientific language, and discloses underlying motivations which he veiled in his scientific prose. It is found that the union of science and poetry "auf hoherer Stelle" which Goethe envisioned applies not only to his explicitly didactic poetry, but has a germinal presence in the form of a poetic subtext within the related prose treatises. More broadly, the unified statement made by his prose and poetic science lifts it into the context of his entire literary production--a point underscored by his setting of scientific studies in their autobiographical context. This in turn is found to participate in a larger program of raising personal experience to archetypal status and viewing the particular as symbolic of the general. Goethe's demand that the language used to describe each domain be derived from that domain, is found to have implications beyond the striving to create appropriate terminology. The same impulse is reflected in scientific writings which create a formal mimesis of the natural phenomenon under study, or which more broadly reflect, by their tone and imagery, the character he experienced in that realm of nature. Finally, Goethe's freedom in dealing with scientific terminology is found to represent a form of linguistic irony, reflecting his perception that all language is "eigentlich bildlich" and cannot refer directly to reality. His recourse to poetry within science thus represents an epistemological statement.

There are at least six positions at which Gothic infinitives may be attached: (1) VI$\sp{\prime\prime},$ the external argument (VI Specifier; see Berard 1993a-b for this and the following); (2) VI$\sp\prime,$ the VI Complement node; (3) A$\sp\prime,$ the AP Complement node; (4) N$\sp\prime,$ the NP Complement node; (5) N$\sb0,$ the node that cojoins to NP; and (6) VI, the head verb node. Gothic permits articularization of subject and, perhaps, object infinitives only as a very exceptional response to unusual length or complexity of expression in situations where the infinitival clause has functional Theme status. VI$\sp\prime$ adjuncts with final semantics regularly take the form (V$\sb{\rm inf}$) when motivated by matrix verbs with "motion" semantics. Verbs with non-"motion" semantics regularly take $\lbrack du + {\rm V\sb{inf}}\rbrack$ final adjuncts. The primary motive for exceptions to this rule is the apparent need to avoid (accusative) Default Case Marking of the subject of the infinitive (see Berard 1993c), in which situation final adjuncts are formulated with ei + optative. Almost all AP complement infinitives, the vast majority of VI complement infinitives, and a considerable majority of subject infinitives and infinitives associated with NPs are bare. Except in the case of a periphrastic future, all subject control predicates have bare infinitives. For embedded Ss which are external arguments, there is very often a controller which is the logical subject of the embedded infinitive and which is marked dative. This dative controller is located in the matrix rather than being in the embedded S and attracted by the matrix into the dative case. This construction thus appears to be an example of raising to dative object. An infinitive may be controlled by a covert NP. Strong evidence for a wider usage of the voice-inspecific synthetic infinitive in a passive-voice sense is found in passive complements of predicate APs. Nominative morphology in the NP of which the AP is predicated, combined with expression of the Agent in a PP, does not permit an active-voice interpretation.

Among the linguistic innovations attributed to mystics is the use of sensual, sensory words to express spiritual and abstract ideas (Waterman 101) which Otto Zirker calls a "Tendenz zur Vergeistigung des Sinnlichen" (15). When histories of the German language discuss Mechthild von Magdeburg (ca. 1212-ca. 1282), they focus primarily on the passionate passages in her text, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit. While Mechthild's descriptions of the mystical union between God and the soul are indeed full of sensual images, her use of sensory vocabulary is not limited to this context. The goal of this dissertation is to come to a fuller understanding of Mechthild's use of sensory vocabulary by means of an investigation constructed from the vocabulary itself, not from a theoretical framework down. Mechthild says that there are five senses, but does not specify what they are. The underlying assumption is that she was acquainted with the traditional five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In addition, she describes an allegorical bride with five kingdoms: eyes, speech, thoughts, hearing and touch. This investigation, therefore, includes the additional "senses" of speaking and thinking. An analysis of Mechthild's sensory vocabulary indicates that Mechthild privileges the senses of sight, hearing, and touch over smell and taste and these have the largest amount of vocabulary allotted to them. These senses are also the most prominent in the interaction between the soul and God. God reveals "visions" to the eyes of the soul and Mechthild records the visual details of what she has seen. God and the soul are among the many voices in Das fliessende Licht. They listen and speak with each other in prayers and dialogues. Mechthild also acquires a voice as she speaks through her text. God and the soul also enter into an intimate tactile relationship with each other in the unio mystica, the union between God and soul for which the mystic longs.

The dissertation examines three stage-plays--Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte (1977), Clara S. (1981), and Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1984)--by the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946, Murzzuschlag). My dissertation views these works as a trilogy, which articulates the playwright's earliest attempt to create a new language of theater so that she could present her own critical views on Austro-German cultural history, particularly her belief that the historical subjugation of women (within private and public spheres) is closely aligned to the formation of a distinctly gendered subjectivity. I examine how Jelinek develops an increasingly complex notion of the intertextually referenced male- and female-subject in each successive play. Chapter One considers Jelinek's criticism of the growing nationalist sentiment in post-war Germany and Austria. She views residual fascism and misogyny in both these nation states as being inextricably linked to a historical process of hegemonic control by religious institutions, and powerful corporate and political interests. Chapter One considers the extent to which Jelinek's use of language and innovative theater techniques rest on avantgarde artistic trends generated by the postwar Vienna Group. This chapter lays the framework of Jelinek's political theater as she describes this in essays, interviews, and discussion sessions with Graz Group and Munchener Literaturarbeitskreis members. Chapter Two is devoted to an analysis of the Nora play. Jelinek's emerging aesthetic of political theater is evaluated through her construction of gendered dramatic subjects, in particular the female-subject Nora Helmer. Chapter Three examines Clara S., which parodies the marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann while alluding through visuals to resurgent fascism in contemporary Austria and Germany. Chapter Four examines Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen. Multiple narratives (fictional, documentary, mythical) are tightly woven together in Jelinek's depiction of Emily Bronte and Carmilla as lesbian vampires locked in a deadly struggle with the opposite sex. I conclude, in Chapter Five, by evaluating the trilogy plays as a cohesive body of work which sheds light on the early development of the playwright's political aesthetic in theater representation.

This dissertation is concerned with the representation and reception of Nazis in West German theater as contributions to the cultural memory of the Holocaust. It examines eight dramas and their performances: Ingeborg Drewitz's Alle Tore waxen bewacht (1955), Erwin Sylvanus's Korczak and die Kinder (1957), Rolf Hochhuth's Der Stellvertreter (1963), Peter Weiss's Die Ermittlung (1965), Thomas Bernhard's Vor dem Ruhestand (1979), Heinar Kipphardt's Bruder Eichmann (1983), Joshua Sobol's Ghetto (1984), and George Tabori's Mein Kampf (1987). This study takes into account the literary criticism of the plays and reviews of the world premieres and subsequent stagings. It highlights the role of the media in influencing the formation of public awareness of a text as well as a staged play. The playwrights created a space for the perpetrator memory that has been a taboo in the national discourse about the past since the end of Word War II. They targeted the suppression of this memory in German society's recurrent tropes of denial, invoking “Nazism as a demonic force,” “Germans as victims of Nazism,” the “Nuremberg defense” of “just following orders,” or “just cogs in a machine,” or “just puppets.” The dramatists challenged such cultural myths by revealing their Nazi characters in situations of choice and exposing an individual motivation (anti-Semitism, sadism, fear, careerism) that led to the issue of individual culpability. The playwrights asked their German audiences to accept the perpetrators as human beings similar to themselves and to contemplate their own complicit relationship with and memory of the Holocaust. Despite the ostentatious confrontation with the perpetrator memory, the reviews of the plays' stagings indicate that the media, for the most part, ignored or played down the perpetrator performative in favor of other aspects of the plays. They also tended to conflate the victim and perpetrator categories in plays by Sobol and Tabori that presented Jews as fallible human beings. Nevertheless, there were some critics who did point out the significance of the Nazi characters for a German audience. Overall, the disparity of views expressed shows that dealing with the perpetrator memory has been an ongoing struggle in German society.