The dissertation provides a comparative analysis of the critical reception of Christa Wolf's early works in the FRG and the GDR. The first chapter documents the emergence of Wolf as advocate of a humanist socialism. It also places her works in the general context of GDR literary history and the critical response to GDR literature in West Germany. Chapters two through five contrast interpretations of each work in the changing political climates in both Germanies and draw general conclusions about Wolf's reception. Despite opposing ideological points of view, East and West German critics recognize Moskauer Novelle or Der geteilte Himmel almost exclusively as sociological documents. While GDR critics praise both texts as representative examples of the literary and societal progress in their country, West German critics respond to Wolf's prose mainly to prove the flaws of socialist realism and socialism in the GDR. Nachdenken uber Christa T. denotes a turning-point for Wolf's own literary production and for the reception of her work in the FRG and the GDR. In her early texts Wolf had assumed an accordance of her own political goals and really existing socialism in the GDR. Nachdenken, however, clearly identifies Wolf as a utopian marxist. Furthermore, she no longer uses her protagonist to represent her ideological convictions, but reveals her own understanding of socialist prose in the accompanying essay "Lesen und Schreiben." My study shows that Wolf's utopian understanding of Marxism as well as the separation of ideology and prose in Nachdenken had a lasting effect on the reception of her work. Because GDR critics avoided a confrontation with ideas that challenged the political structure of their state, they could not provide adequate interpretations of Nachdenken and later texts. Its utopian dimension as well as its lack of didacticism encouraged Western critics to adapt Wolf's prose to their own societal context, and they often failed to acknowledge the Marxist basis of Wolf's writing. The reaction to Unter den Linden and later texts shows that the international stature Wolf had gained with Nachdenken enabled her to become an influential critic of Stalinist socialism and Western civilization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-7818 |
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| Creators | Von Ankum, Katharina Elisabeth |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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