This volume is a response to a renewed interest in narrative form in contemporary literary studies, taking up the question of literary narratives and their encounters with modernism and postmodernism within the German-language milieu. Original essays written by scholars of German and Comparative Literature approach the issue of narrative form anew, analyzing the ways in which modernist and postmodernist German-language narratives frame and/or deconstruct historical narratives. Beginning with the German-language modernist author par excellence, Franz Kafka, the volume's essays explore the unique perspective on historical change offered by literature. The authors (Kafka, Kappacher, Goll, Bernhard, Menasse, and Wolf, among others) and works interpreted in the essays included here span the period from before World War I to the post-Holocaust, post-Wall present. Individual essays focus on modernism, postmodernism, narrative theory, and autobiography.

Author Biography

Sabine Wilke is Professor of German at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, where she is also associated with European Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, and cultural studies. She has written books and articles on body constructions in modern German literature and culture, German unification, the history of German film and theater, contemporary German authors and filmmakers, German colonialism and the overlapping concerns of postcolonialism and ecocriticism.