German Literature in a New Century : : Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations / / ed. by Katharina Gerstenberger, Patricia Herminghouse.

• MitwirkendeR: Anderson, Donovan,; Cohen-Pfister, Laurel,; Dahlke, Birgit,; Gerstenberger, Katharina,; Halverson, Rachel J.,; Herminghouse, Patricia,; Karolle-Berg, Julia,; McIntyre, Sean M.,; Nelson, Erika M.,; Norman, Beret,; Norton, Sydney,; Pizer, John,; Schmidt, Gary,; Simpson, Patricia Anne,; Skow, Katya,
• HerausgeberIn: Gerstenberger, Katharina,; Herminghouse, Patricia,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2008]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)

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

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- German Literature in a New Century: Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations: An Introduction -- I Trends: Literature in the Public Sphere -- Introduction -- 1 The Literary Public Sphere: A Case for German Particularity? -- 2 Intellectuals in the Public Sphere: An Interview with Josef Joffe -- 3 “Literatur findet . . . nicht nur auf Papier statt” The Eventization of Literature in Hamburg -- 4 The Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig and the Making of an Author: Tobias Hülswitt Hits the Road for Literature and Ends Up a Writer -- II Traditions: History, Memory, and Narrative -- Introduction -- 5 Degrees of History in Contemporary German Narratives -- 6 Luftkrieg Revisited: Contemporary Responses to the Allied Bombings of German Cities -- 7 An Aesthetics of Memory for Third-Generation Germans: Tanja Dückers’s Himmelskörper -- 8 The Continuation of Countermemory: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde -- III Transitions: Form and Performance after 1989 -- Introduction -- 9 A Path of Poetic Potentials: Coordinates of German Lyric Identity in the Poetry of Zafer Şenocak -- 10 Performing GDR in Poetry? The Literary Signifi cance of “East German” Poetry in Unifi ed Germany -- 11 Feridun Zaimoglu’s Performance of Gender and Authorship -- IV Transformations: Women Writing in the New Century -- Introduction -- 12 From Frauenliteratur to Frauenliteraturbetrieb: Marketing Literature to German Women in the Twenty-First Century -- 13 Social Alienation and Gendered Surveillance: Julia Franck Observes Post-Wende Society -- 14 Small Stories: The Novels of Martina Hefter -- 15 The Young Author as Public Intellectual: The Case of Juli Zeh -- Contributors -- Index