Ebner-Eschenbach, Heyse, Raabe, Storm, Meyer, and Hauptmann>

The novella, one of the most sophisticated genres of narrative literature, owes its development primarily to German belles lettres. In the present collection, Mr. Steinhauer has assembled a representative sampling that ranges from the Enlightenment to the postwar periods and reveals the scope and flexibility of this art form. Included are Wieland's Love and Friendship Tested, Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas, Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl, Hoffmann's Mademoiselle de Scudery, Keller's Clothes Make the Man, Meyer's Sufferings of a Boy, Mann's The Bajazzo, Fontane's Stine, Hauptmann's Heretic of Soana, Kafka's Hunger Artist, Schnitzler's Fraulein Else, and Bergengruen's Ordeal by Fire.

This volume of new essays by leading scholars treats a representative sampling of German realist prose from the period 1848 to 1900, the period of its dominance of the German literary landscape. It includes essays on familiar, canonical authors -- Stifter, Freytag, Raabe, Fontane, Thomas Mann -- and canonical texts, but also considers writers frequently omitted from traditional literary histories, such as Luise Mühlbach, Friedrich Spielhagen, Louise von François, Karl May, and Eugenie Marlitt. The introduction situates German realism in the context of both German literary history and of developments in other European literatures, and surveys the most prominent critical studies of ninteenth-century realism. The essays treat the following topics: Stifter's Brigitta and the lesson of realism; Mühlbach, Ranke, and the truth of historical fiction; regional histories as national history in Freytag's Die Ahnen; gender and nation in Louise von François's historical fiction; theory, reputation, and the career of Friedrich Spielhagen; Wilhelm Raabe and the German colonial experience; the poetics of work in Freytag, Stifter, and Raabe; Jewish identity in Berthold Auerbach's novels; Eugenie Marlitt's narratives of virtuous desire; the appeal of Karl May in the Wilhelmine Empire; Thomas Mann's portrayal of male-male desire in his early short fiction; and Fontane's Effi Briest and the end of realism. Contributors: Robert C. Holub, Brent O. Petersen, Lynne Tatlock, Thomas C. Fox, Jeffrey L. Sammons, John Pizer, Hans J. Rindisbacher, Irene S. Di Maio, Kirsten Belgum, Nina Berman, Robert Tobin, Russell A. Berman. Todd Kontje is professor of German at the University of California, San Diego.

Downing s highly original, thorough, and rewarding book is certain to emerge as an indispensable critical reference-point for scholars and students in the areas of narrative theory, problems of realism, and 19th-century German prose. . . . A nearly ideal combination of intellectual scope, erudition, and originality. Thomas Pfau, Duke University To write an engaging and entertaining study of German or poetic realism that offers insightful and differentiated readings of the novellas of Stifter, Storm, Keller, C.F. Meyer, and Raabe through the lenses focused on repetition of narratology, Critical Theory, and psychoanalysis and, to a leser extent gender studies, is without a doubt a daunting endeavor. This study, with its keen analysis of the doubling within German realist texts, is equal to the task. . . . While this book is written to engage and challenge scholars of realism, the clarity of Downing s prose makes the textual twists and turns, and thus the study as a whole, equally accessible to non-specialists. German Studies Review"

A much-needed look at the fiction that was actually read by masses of Germans in the late nineteenth century, and the conditions of its publication and reception. The late nineteenth century was a crucial period for the development of German fiction. Political unification and industrialization were accompanied by the rise of a mass market for German literature, and with it the beginnings ofthe German bestseller.Offering escape, romance, or adventure, as well as insights into the modern world, nineteenth-century bestsellers often captured the imagination of readers well into the twentieth century and beyond. However, many have been neglected by scholars. This volume offers new readings of literary realism by focusing not on the accepted intellectual canon but on commercially successful fiction in its material and social contexts. It investigates bestsellers from writers such as Freytag, Dahn, Jensen, Raabe, Viebig, Stifter, Auerbach, Storm, Möllhausen, Marlitt, Suttner, and Thomas Mann. The contributions examine the aesthetic strategies that made the works sucha success, and writers' attempts to appeal simultaneously on different levels to different readers. Bestselling writers often sought to accommodate the expectations of publishers and the marketplace, while preserving some sense ofartistic integrity. This volume sheds light on the important effect of the mass market on the writing not just of popular works, but of German prose fiction on all levels. Contributors: Christiane Arndt, Caroline Bland, Elizabeth Boa, Anita Bunyan, Katrin Kohl, Todd Kontje, Peter C. Pfeiffer, Nicholas Saul, Benedict Schofield, Ernest Schonfield, Martin Swales, Charlotte Woodford. Charlotte Woodford is Lecturer in German and Directorof Studies in Modern Languages at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Benedict Schofield is Senior Lecturer in German and Head of the Department of German at King's College London.

Foreword by George C. Schoolfield>

The setting is Danzig during World War II. The narrator recalls a boyhood scene in which a black cat pounces on his friend Mahlke's "mouse"-his prominent Adam's apple. This incident sets off a wild series of events that ultimately leads to Mahlke's becoming a national hero. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Foreword by Dennis F. Mahoney The German Library is a new series of the major works of German literature and thought from medieval times to the present. The volumes have forwards by internationally known writers and introductions by prominent scholars. Excerpts six texts (by La Roche, Forster, Wieland, Moritz, Heinse, and Braker) that show a cross-section of forms and themes that are representative as well as special examples of 18th-century German prose.

Our main words defining emotional states suggest that we have clarity about them: expressions like "love," "hatred," "anxiety," or "sorrow" seem clear enough. The reality, however, tends to be more complicated. We are often faced with gestures and utterances that are difficult to interpret; we thus find ourselves wondering about the affective force of what has just been said: "Was that an insult?" "Flirtation?" "Aggression?" Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond looks at three interlocking forms of social violence--flirtation, passive aggression, and domestic violence. In order to understand their circulation, it traces their literary-historical genealogy in German realism and modernism--in scenes from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Storm, Theodor Fontane, Robert Walser, and Franz Kafka, covering a historical period from the middle of the 19th century to the early decades of the 20th century. Reading realist and modernist literature through 21st-century affect theory and vice versa, the analyses collected in this book show the deep literary history of our current cultural predicaments and predilections.

Foreword by Günter Grass This anthology gives a sense of the broad range of prose writing, the many interests of the seventeenth century intellectual, a rich diversity of genres, fictions and non-fictions.