This thesis presents a comparative analysis of Hartmann von Aue’s \(Gregorius\), Kafka’s \( Die\) \(Verwandlung\) and Thomas Mann’s \(Der\) \(Erwählte\), focusing on their uses of biblical motifs. Connected by pervasive themes of guilt and atonement, each text also relies similarly in its expression of these ideas on the use of images which are familiar from the biblical context, and thus suggest archetypal instances of sin and redemption as points of comparison for the protagonist’s fate. In this way all three texts create a manifest sense of helpless affliction by guilt by implementing echoes of the fate of Adam, both in the relationships of their characters, and in structures of recurring loss, decline and expulsion. Each narrative, moreover, also suggests allusions to the opposing figure of Christ through concurrent echoes of the Passion in its imagery of degradation and exile, and, to varying degrees, through the introduction of complementary images of restoration and rehabilitation drawing on patterns of resurrection. The texts diverge, however, in the way in which they relate these fields of imagery, as the correlation of Fall and redemption which is symbolically affirmed in Hartmann’s narrative, and echoed in Mann’s, is disrupted by Kafka’s introduction of a tragic conclusion.

The thesis explores important similarities and differences between responses to bourgeois society in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924) and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). It examines these texts’ presentations of the shifting morality of bourgeois culture, the prevailing sense of paralysis and fragmentation at the beginning of the twentieth century, and compares the authors’ use of allusions to myth, and their explorations of concepts of time. However, by considering the ambivalent responses to bourgeois society as they are presented within these texts, and a selection of Mann and Eliot’s other creative and critical works, the thesis also highlights significant differences in the authors’ responses to bourgeois society, which are indicative of the broader divergent traditions in which they positioned themselves. Eliot subscribes to a tradition based upon the framework of the Christian faith, and the classical literary canon, with an ‘impersonal’ approach to artistic creation. By contrast, Mann places the German ‘burgher’ at the core of the tradition to which he subscribes, emphasising personality, and favouring a humanistic approach, which values the individual’s capacity for ethical judgement based on reason. This framework demonstrates that the thematic similarities and common allusions in Mann and Eliot’s creative works are underscored by radically different authorial approaches and belief systems.

It is undoubtedly one of Kafka's finest erotic scenes – the description of K.'s furtive tryst on the tap-room floor. – Wrapped in Frieda's arms, he rolls back and forth through small puddles of beer and rubbish, her small body burning in his reluctant hands. "Hours passed there," writes Kafka, "hours breathing together with a single heartbeart [gemeinsamen Herzschlags], hours in which K. constantly felt he was lost or had wandered farther into foreign lands [der Fremde] than any human being before him ..." What makes this passage so compelling is the manner in which Kafka, in four short lines, manages to distil everything ambiguous and terrifying about the erotic relation into a scene which, otherwise, could almost pass for sentimental.

<p> Science fiction critics have dueled over definitions of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century science fiction, often classifying early science fiction as mere prototype. Chapter One of this thesis examines the myriad definitions of the term &ldquo;science fiction&rdquo; allowing a distinguishable set of literary characteristics for science fiction, fantasy, and science fantasy. Early science fiction authors such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Godwin, Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac, Margaret Cavendish, and Jonathan Swift refashioned the familiar fantasy genre with scientific ideas, establishing a science fantasy genre to frame dangerous and rebellious ideas in a conventional and innocuous structure, the fiction novel. Chapter Two analyzes the science fiction elements present in early science fantasy of Kepler, Godwin, De Bergerac, Cavendish, and Swift as well as the scientific, religious, and political ramifications of science fantasy in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Chapter Three briefly highlights elements of early science fantasy that influenced twentieth- and twenty-first century science fiction. Early science fantasy not only influenced generations of science fiction writers and scientists, but it also was one of the main forces that legitimized the sciences.</p>

This study seeks to identify a coalition of philosophy and literature in the work of Franz Kafka, and begins with a grounding of his output in the philosophical context from which it emerged. This relatively under-researched philosophical backdrop consists in Kafka's study, at university and in a discussion group, of philosophical positions derived from the "descriptive psychology" of Franz Brentano. Kafka was hence conversant with several philosophical agendas, notably those of logic, Gestalt psychology, and a nascent form of phenomenology, which all derived their impetus from Brentano's work. The initial issue, therefore, is that of assessing the extent of a purported influence of such theories on Kafka's texts. What emerges as a "strategy" of Kafka's work is the aesthetic exploitation of such positions; a tactic which constitutes an almost parodistic subversion of these early forms of phenomenological thought. Thus on the one hand it is implied that the narrative technique of Kafka's work, and in particular the representation of consciousness and its "world", is derived from Brentanian thought, and on the other that this influence is modulated in a specific direction, which renders these texts so singularly amenable to post-structuralist thought. My project consequently proceeds to examine the post-structuralist response to Kafka while juxtaposing this analysis with the grounding of his work in proto-phenomenology. Central to this stage of the study are Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari, and the scrutiny of their perspectives will be organized by the themes of authorship, interpretation, power, and desire. The exploration of the "deconstructive" standpoint, represented primarily through Blanchot and Derrida, will be guided by an account of why such a stance seems to be accommodated so readily by Kafka's work, and also of the extent to which his texts could be said, on the basis of the influence of Brentanian thought, to resist such appropriation.

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The aim of this thesis is to present the fundamental philosophical positions of Early German Romanticism, focusing on the three following writers: J. C. F. Holderlin, Novalis, and F. Schlegel. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of the first-philosophical, or ontological foundations of Romanticism and discusses its appropriation and critique of the work of Fichte, arriving at an elucidation of Romantic ontology as an ontology of differencing and production. The second chapter looks at how epistemology is transformed, in the hands of the Romantics, and due to the attention they paid to language, semiotic theory, and the operations of irony in discourse, into poetology - a theory of knowledge, into a theory of poetic production. In the third chapter a confrontation between the philosophical positions of Romanticism and those of the main currents of German Idealism (Schelling, Hegel) is undertaken; through this confrontation, the essential trait of Romantic thought is arrived at, namely the thought of an incomplete Absolute, as opposed to the absolute as totality in Idealism. The final chapter considers the avenue left open by the notion of the incomplete Absolute, and the Romantics' chief legacy, namely the theory of literature; literature is thus seen as coextensive with philosophy, and analysed under three conceptual categories (the theory of genre, the fragment, criticism) which all betray their provenance from the thought lying at the core of Romanticism: the incomplete Absolute. Finally, in the conclusion a summation of this exposition of romanticism is presented, alongside a brief consideration of the relevance of the Romantic project in contemporary critical/philosophical debates.

The thesis compares the values and attitudes promoted in the fiction of five authors associated with the 'Heimatkunst' movement. The introduction attempts a definition of the term 'Heimatkunst' and then proceeds to an examination of the theoretical writings of Adolf Bartels and Friedrich Lienhard, indicating the often considerable differences in attitude between the two critics and outlining such common ground as they share with each other and the "practitioners of the movement treated in this study. The thesis then moves to an analysis of single novels, where necessary relating these works to their authors' other writings. The novels chosen for analysis are Wilhelm von Polenz' Der Büttnerbauer, Adolf Bartels' Die Dithmarscher, Gustav Frenssen's Jörn Uhl, Ludwig Ganghofer's Der hohe Schein and Hermann Löns's Der Wehrwolf. These analyses confirm the existence of that common ground between the authors outlined in the introduction - their veneration of rural life and their suspicion of urban culture and values, their anti- intellectual bias, nationalist or racialist sympathies and their belief that contemporary ills may be cured or ameliorated by a return to the pre-industrial, nature-based values of the rural community. The manner, degree and consistency with which they commit themselves to these attitudes and views vary and there are certain preoccupations common to only some of the authors dealt with, although even these differing concerns can often be related to individual interpretations of shared premises. The thesis concludes with an examination of common stylistic and technical features of their fiction and the literary devices employed to direct the reader's sympathies.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Germanic Studies, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct 5, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-02, Section: A, page: 0575. Adviser: Marc Weiner.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Depts. of Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 14, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4669. Adviser: William W. Rasch.