ABSTRACT
The article examines the return of the soldier, based on three key texts with widely differing perspectives: Brecht's Trommeln in der Nacht, Hofmannsthal's Der Schwierige und Borchert's ...Draußen vor der Tür. The theme of homecoming exceeds that of the returning soldier since it includes a discussion of those who remained at home, recognising the important role of the female protagonists in reintegrating the homecoming soldier. In a heuristic procedure these texts will be thematically related to Homer's Odyssee. Based on Bakhtin's terminology of the dialogue of texts and a resulting multiplicity of meaning, an attempt is made to establish aspects of thematic overlapping which in turn may provide the tool for a typology of the plays’ subject‐matter which, however, would exceed generic considerations. Of special importance are examples of double coding, leading not only to the ambivalent fate of the returning soldier, but establishing also a double role of the protagonist as cuckold and suitor. Such features seem to prevent the development of other, potentially relevant plots, e.g. the Spartacist uprising in Trommeln, the marriage of Hans‐Karl in Der Schwierige and the successful homecoming of Beckmann in Draußen vor der Tür.
Das Thema der Kriegsheimkehr wird an drei Schlüsseltexten drastisch unterschiedlicher Art untersucht, Brechts Trommeln in der Nacht, Hofmannsthals Der Schwierige und Borcherts Draußen vor der Tür, die in einem heuristischen Verfahren mit Themen aus Homers Odyssee in Verbindung gebracht werden. Eine Behandlung der Kriegsheimkehr geht über jene des Heimkehrers hinaus, da sie auch die Zuhausegebliebenen mit einschließt und die wichtige Rolle der Frauen anerkennt. Ausgehend von einem Dialogismus der Texte (Bachtin), lassen sich thematische Verbindungen herstellen, die ihrerseits das Werkzeug zu einer Typologie der Kriegsheimkehr liefern könnten, allerdings über spezifische Gattungsbezüge hinausgehend. Besonders relevant sind Beispiele einer Doppelkodierung, die ihrerseits wesentlich zum ambivalenten Schicksal des Heimkehrers beitragen, darüberhinaus aber auch dessen Doppelfunktion von betrogenem Ehemann und Freier beleuchten. Andere, potentiell relevante Handlungsstränge – der Spartakusaufstand in den Trommeln, die Eheschließung Hans‐Karls im Schwierigen und eine geglückte Heimkehr Beckmanns in Draußen vor der Tür – werden dadurch verhindert.
This dissertation addresses the concurrent revival of experimental writing and linguistic skepticism in West Germany and Austria after 1945, concentrating on the work of Helmut Heißenbüttel, Konrad ...Bayer, Peter Handke, and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. While the immediate postwar years gave rise to a germanophone literature that was largely intolerant of formal experimentation—due to widespread adherence to a neo-Sartrean model of littérature engagée and a restorationist return to classical form—certain writers began to oppose this aesthetic conservatism in the early fifties. Influenced by international avant-garde developments—from concrete poetry to the nouveau roman—they developed a new form of German writing that actively experimented with literary and linguistic form. Their work was often accompanied by a sophisticated theoretical critique of language, connecting back via Wittgenstein and Whorf to the turn-of-the-century Sprachkrise and the writings of Mauthner and Hofmannsthal. I aim to offer an analysis of this language-skeptical approach to writing, showing how it was employed to create a cultural space for avant-garde literature in the postwar period—presenting experimental writing as a legitimate intellectual endeavor with tangible social value, despite its running contrary to prevalent models of politically engaged or formally conservative writing. Against the common literary-historical view of the sixties as the decade of the "politicization of literature," I aim to show the existence of an alternate track of "linguistic aesthetics" propagated almost exclusively by writers of experimental literature, developing in the fifties and extending through the sixties and beyond. For these writers, a skeptical and analytical treatment of language became the necessary starting point for any progressive literature. I also aim to show how later writers like Handke and Brinkmann came to see this linguistic skepticism as en encumbering limitation of literary possibility. In their early-seventies work, which is often grouped with the movement of New Subjectivity, these writers adopt a pragmatic model of language as a flawed but functional tool for the communication of subjective experience, resulting in a writing that continues to explore the ambiguous link between word and world.
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