This thesis attempts to consider all important translations of a literary character from the German in the period. It suggests that these were far more important in establishing the principles and popularising the mood of neo-Classicism in Britain than in conveying any Gothic themes. It gives reasons for the failure of the Sturm und Drang to make much impact on British writing. The limits of the thesis are chosen to emphasise the unity of this period of translation. This has been distorted by earlier emphasis on Mackenzie's Address of 1788. The reception of translations in the 1790s was conditioned by translations of the 1760s and 1770s. The two chapters on Gessner are connected by one on Winckelmann, and the three study the way in which neo-classical theory was delivered in this country and provided with popular literary models to establish it in the public taste. The importance of this for 19th century Romantic poetry is assumed. The connection of these translations with experiments in 'poetic prose' is traced and the Radical implications of the German pastoral before 1798 are outlined. The next chapters on Holcroft, Mackenzie and Fuseli suggest that, by their circumstances and by their natures, they failed to introduce effectively the new German writing, in particular drama, to Britain. The ill-acknowledged influence of the French is stressed, so is the fact that Mackenzie's Address was more of a defence against an attack than an introduction. The remaining chapters consider the shallow nature of German influence at its apparent height in the 1790s. The Speculator's flawed critical approach was not corrected over the next nine years. Goethe's lack of success is explained by the sequence and merit of his translations. Schiller's absence from the public stage is examined and related to the political climate. Kotzebue, it is proposed, was as popular as he and the contemporary theatre deserved. The first of the two chapters on William Taylor considers the source and the limitations of his brilliance as a translator; the second his inflated reputation as a critic. Finally the relationship between the German novels translated before 1794 and the 'German Gothic' novels is discussed and an attempt made to estimate the reality behind the myth of the latter.

An analysis of the religious and social factors contributiong to the motivation of authors of German-Swiss literature, 1850-1940.

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.

Images of movement represent a ubiquitous element in Kafka’s writings. This study explores the role of these images as a form of patterning in the fictions. With an eye to continuity and evolution, the study explores the patterns of movement pervading Kafka’s early collection Betrachtung and a selection of texts written between 1915 and 1917. What emerges is a persistent concern with the condition of restlessness, its origins and consequences. The condition emerges from a conflict between the protagonists’ desire for stability and purposive activity and their experience of dynamic forces that escape or resist any form of containment. This conflict results in an oscillating motion that dominates the physical, mental and narrative movements shaping Kafka’s stories. Analysing the relation between early and later texts, the thesis argues that Kafka deploys this central conflict productively to capture a wide spectrum of states of mind. As he explores restlessness in ever wider circles of life, he explores psychological, social and ideological structures, as well as some of the grand narratives of life, death and myth. This differentiated view on the inner dynamics of Kafka's narratives provides a fruitful perspective on questions concerning the development of the oeuvre as a whole.

This thesis is concerned primarily with Doderer as a realist. For Doderer, the realistic novel embodies an implicit moral purpose, a re-conquering of the 'external* world of everyday reality. I have, therefore, started from Doderer's moral viewpoint and tried to discuss how this is actually embodied in the novels themselves. I have taken three specific aspects of his work; narrator, plot, and language. In discussing the narrator I have argued that the most successful parts of Doderer 1 s work are those where a genuinely personal narrator is present. This can be seen in "Die DaWien" where the use of more than one narrator broadens the range of the novel and means that the problems of the would-be novelist are integrated with the central moral concern of 'Henschwerdung*. In comparison, those sections of Doderer's work where the author himself is in charge of the narration are infinitely less successful, as can be seen from the passages in "Die Damonen" where the author takes over the narration from Geyrenhoff and Schlaggenberg. In discussing plot I have tried to suggest that the structure of Doderer 1 s novels is a perfect mirror for his overall moral attitude to life. There are, however, certain thematic weaknesses in his moral viewpoint, and these manifest themselves in faults in the actual plots. The fourth chapter discusses the nature of Doderer 1 s language, which is not simply that of the "traditional" realist. I have tried to show how various aspects of Doderer's style (particularly his recurrent use of certain images ) are important as a reflection of his central moral concern. Furthermore, the very confusion and restlessness of the language is often a deliberate evocation of the insecurity in the minds of the characters themselves. For Doderer, language is important as a concept; if properly used, it implies a right moral attitude to life, one of communication and contact between people. In the concluding chapter I have attempted to locate Doderer in the world of the twentieth century Austrian novel and to show that, although he is strikingly "unmodern" in both his moral and his artistic standpoints, this does not justify one in simply dismissing his novels as "epigonal".

This thesis investigates the use of aphorism in the work (\(Notizenwerk\)) of Ludwig Hohl and selected passages of Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Handke in order to demonstrate the connections (Zusammenhänge) between aphorisms, taking seriously what aphoristic writers say about their own work, i.e. that aphorisms are the result of long secret chains of thought (Nietzsche). The study thereby addresses a gap in the research identified by Neumann. Concurring with Fedler, this thesis understands aphorism as combining conceptual with metaphorical (non-conceptual) thought and chains of thought are investigated on different levels. The dissertation illustrates that aphoristic writers dissolve conceptual boundaries and have elaborate concepts of phantasy (\(Phantasie\)), confirming Blumenberg’s view that wherever the conceptual is questioned, phantasy will be re-evaluated. In the course of this, Kassner’s influence on Hohl and Hohl’s influence on Handke will be shown. With the help of Begriffsgeschichte the thesis will demonstrate unity underlying Hohl’s Notizen, that aphorisms are capable of expressing a complex life-affirming theory, and that furthermore the aphorism cannot be understood without an existential, ineffable and personal dimension. An ontological fragmentariness underlies aphoristic writing, meaning that there is no opposition between aphorism and fragment and that instead aphorisms are inherently fragmentary.

An Introduction to the thesis presents a "Forschungsbericht" which summarises and discusses research to date. Both Heinrich von Beringen and Jacobus de Cessolis are introduced, and the German and Latin manuscripts used in the production of the texts are described. The text of Heinrich von Beringen's "Schachbuch" edited from manu-script Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet. et phil. 4o Nr. 25 follows: Part 1 (the poet's introduction to his text), Part 2 (the noble chess-pieces), Part 3 (the pawns) and Part 4 (the moves in the game of chess). This is accompanied by readings from manuscript London, British Library, Additional Manuscript 24946 and in Part 3 by a Latin parallel text from Bloomington (Indiana), Lilly Library, Indiana University, Ricketts 194 (or from Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Lat 169 where the Bloomington text fails). Endnotes relating to the text have been added. Appendix I correlates verses in the Stuttgart and London manuscripts, and Appendix II presents an up-to-date list (with references) of extant manuscripts of the "Liber de ludo scaccorum".

More than eighty years after the death of its author, Kafka fiction continues to stimulate diverse critical interest: only Shakespeare has generated more publications, more biographies or indeed more PhD theses. In recent years, scholarship has recognised the irreducible, polysemantic nature of Kafka’s writing as a stimulus for this regenerative criticism. Another factor is the author himself, along with his well-known biography. Particularly in published monographs, Franz Kafka’s life story has attracted almost as much attention as the fiction he produced. Thus, unusually for a writer whose works have been so thoroughly dissected by criticism, Franz Kafka seems to have survived the so-called death of the author, promulgated throughout literary theory. This thesis highlights a tension between these two stimuli; between the elusive multivocality of Kafka’s fiction and the ongoing influence of the author. It argues that mythologies about Kafka have now outlived their usefulness, and suggests that greater attentiveness to theoretical insights might benefit the field. Accordingly, this study proposes new ways of looking at Kafka which marginalise the influence of the author and related approaches to his fiction. In its investigation of authority as a theme of Kafka’s writing, this volume repositions Kafka’s fictional and non-fictional output within new and established contexts, exploring philosophical and critical dimensions of the oeuvre. In so doing, it asks what Kafka can teach us about our reading of Kafka, our reading of theory and reading in general.

My thesis explores the various ways in which a small selection of novels published in 1931 depict and respond to a widespread sense of crisis during the final phase of the Weimar Republic, arguing that the authors foreground a powerful sense that modernity itself is in a state of crisis. I consider how the novels articulate diverse experiences of modernity, both within and beyond the metropolis and from different social, generational and gender perspectives. Moreover, I examine how the authors' evaluation of modernity is reflected in their use of formal and narrative techniques. Focusing upon Gabriele Tergit's Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm, Hans Fallada's Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben and Irmgard Keun's Gilgi - eine von uns, I contend that the ambiguity and complexity of the authors' responses towards modernity were often flattened, simplified or ignored by reviewers in the politically polarized environment of the late Weimar Republic. This is partly the result of the debates about Neue Sachlichkeit which influenced the original reception of the novels and have continued to shape subsequent criticism. The novels themselves have often been labelled as classic examples of Neue Sachlichkeit. However, it is my contention that the novels also problematize some of the programmatic statements about this movement which circuated widely in the Weimar Republic. Therefore, I seek to re-examine the novels within the context of Weimar debates about modernity and Neue Sachlichkeit, as well as in the light of recent theoretical work in these areas. I also draw extensive comparisons and contrasts between the models of modernity foregrounded in Tergit's novel and Emile Durkheim's writings on anomie; in Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben and Ernst Bloch's Erbschaft dieser Zeit, and in Gilgi - eine von uns and Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World.

This thesis examines Kulturkritik and the question of the representation of difference in the work of Anne Duden. It uncovers a far-reaching interrogation of Western culture in Duden's work as oppositional relations between culture-nature, mind-body, subject and object are constantly questioned. It examinesthe criticism of the treatment of the body in Western culture which appears in the texts in a variety of ways. Though oblique reference to Cartesian and Enlightenment selves, the texts question dominant modes of being in the West and the consequences of this promotion. This is examined firstly through an analysis of Duden's essays on paintings of George and the dragon where the links between Duden's thought and the radical philosophy coming out of the 1960s are investigated. Then the prose works Ubergang and Das Judasschaf are explored to highlight the criticism of binary structures which I argue needs to be understood with reference to the types of selves and bodies which are privileged in Western culture; the production of 'useful/rational' bodies and hierarchical and oppositional subject-object, mind-matter relations prevalent in Enlightenment thought. I also argue that there is not just a criticism of structures perceived to be dominant in Western culture in Duden's texts, but that different modes of being are conveyed by the writing as differences within culture. The narrators become selves through fluid processes of interchange with the environment rather than existing as fixed entities. This analysis is linked to Duden's questioning of abstract and generalised concepts which enables a reading of the experiences of the narrators not as a 'breakdown' or loss of self, but as expressions of alternative modes of being. A close examination of the narrative style in Ubergang and Das Judasschaf analyses how selves, bodies and reality are represented. I argue that the writing is centrally concerned with areas beneath fixed forms and remains immanent to the experiences of pain, dissolution, joy, panic and the semi-conscious body rather than transcending and translating them into speech. Thus the writing continually gives us the impression that it paradoxically narrates word-less experiences. This writing of the body and other realms normally considered beyond representation questions universal norms and concepts. However, the narrative does not descend into nonsense and differences and specificities are not located beyond words but expressed in the text. The avant-garde properties of Duden's texts are examined through an analysis of montage techniques and the juxtaposition of levels of time in 'Ubergang and Das Judasschaf. Narrative and formal aspects are then explicitly linked to history and politics in an examination of Das Judasschaf and the centrality of the problem of living in a post-Holocaust culture. I will argue that the text's Kulturkritik indirectly interrogates the culture which produced the Holocaust and that the breakdown of narrative can be linked to the complexities of the post-Holocaust historical state. In addition the presentation of the Holocaust through the quotation of historical documents is understood in terms of the text's inability to represent the Holocaust. Aesthetics and politics are also brought together in the examination of the Steinschlag poems. With reference to Duden's essays on aesthetics, I argue that the Steinschlag texts speak with and through the broken remains of a language left over from the atrocities of the 20th Century. The musical re-configurations of the remnants, however, produce a negative hope by speaking from the sites of the gaps in culture and history.