German Literature in a New Century

Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations

Katharina Gerstenberger, Patricia Herminghouse, Katharina Gerstenberger, Patricia Herminghouse

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780857451682
  9781845455477
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781845458669
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

While the first decade after the fall of the Berlin wall was marked by the challenges of unification and the often difficult process of reconciling East and West German experiences, many Germans expected that the "new century" would achieve "normalization." The essays in this volume take a closer look at Germany's new normalcy and argue for a more nuanced picture that considers the ruptures as well as the continuities. Germany's new generation of writers is more diverse than ever before, and their texts often not only speak of a Germany that is multicultural but also take a more playful attitude toward notions of identity. Written with an eye toward similar and dissimilar developments and traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, this volume balances overviews of significant trends in present-day cultural life with illustrative analyses of individual writers and texts.

Table of contents

• Title page-German Literature in a New Century
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I-Trends
• Chapter 1-The litarary public sphere
• Chapter 2-Intellectuals in the public sphere
• Chapter 3-'Literatur Findet...Nicht Nur Auf Papier Statt"
• Chapter 4-The Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig and the Making of an Author
• Part II-Traditions
• Chapter 5-Degrees of History in Contemporary German Narratives
• Chapter 6-Luftkrieg Revisited
• Chapter 7-An Aesthetics of Memory for third-generation Germans
• Chapter 8-The continuation of countermemory
• Part III-Transitions
• Chapter 9-A Path of Poetic Potentials
• Chapter 10-Performing GDR in Poetry?
• Chapter 11-Feridum Zaimoglu's Performance of Gender and Authorship
• Part IV-Transformations
• Chapter 12-From Frauenliteratur to Frauenliteraturbetrieb
• Chapter 13-Social Alienation and Gendered Surveillance
• Chapter 14-Small Stories
• Chapter 15-The young author as public intellectual
• Contributors
• Index