Grotesque Ambivalence

Melancholy and Mourning in the Prose Work of Albert Drach

Mary Cosgrove

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9783484651494
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110934205
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: Literature

Die erste englischsprachige Untersuchung der Prosa von Albert Drach (1902-1995) arbeitet die Originalität von Drachs Autobiografie im Kontext gegenwärtiger Holocaust-Diskurse heraus. Dabei geht es um das Verhältnis zwischen Drachs komisch-grotesker Sprache und dem melancholischen Darstellungsmodus in der Holocaust-Autobiografie. Drachs Prosa legt die totalitären Mechanismen seiner Zeit zugleich leidenschaftlich und kritisch bloß.

Table of contents

• Chapter 1. Introduction
• 1.1 Albert Drach: Revolutionary Poet and Bearer of Death
• 1.2 »O Ophelia«: The Encounter with the Cadaver
• 1.3 Status Nascendi versus Status Quo: In defence of Nature Morte
• 1.4 Positions
• 1.5 The Child in Flight
• Chapter 2. The Grotesque: Topography of Transgression, Morphology of Emptiness
• 2.1 Body Language
• 2.2 An Entire Thematics of Mortality and Vitality
• 2.3 Subterranean Spaces
• Chapter 3. Grotesque Discourses: Mourning and Melancholia
• 3.1 Constellation of Cross-Contamination
• 3.2 From System to Process: The Semiotic, the Symbolic and the Thetic
• 3.3 Anaphora of Nothing
• Chapter 4. Floating Documents
• 4.1 The Protokoll: Epic of the In-Between
• 4.2 Outside the Text: Creating the Catachrestic Space
• Chapter 5. Ex-centrics, Evil Eyes and Missing Persons: The Optics of Mimicry in Das Goggelbuch
• 5.1 Grotesque Surplus: Mimic Man
• 5.2 Representing the In-Between: The Secret Art of Invisibility
• 5.3 Fallible Frames
• 5.4 Aphanisic Faders
• Chapter 6. »Z. Z.« das ist die Zwischenzeit: Paralysis of the Powerless
• 6.1 Diverging Paths: A Theoretical Re-evaluation
• 6.2 Writing Apotheosis
• 6.3 In the Shadow of the Egocrat: A Micro-Physics of Power
• 6.4 The Ventriloquist’s Dummies
• Chapter 7. The Time of Evil Children
• 7.1 The Spectre of Absolute Negation
• 7.2 Divine Intoxication: Simulating Infantile Sovereignty
• 7.3 Infernal Sobriety: Apotheosis of the Eternal Present
• 7.4 Contours of the Culpable
• 7.5 Suffer Little Children
• Conclusion. Concentration Camps of the Mind and the Child in Flight
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgements