Original research in edited books
· ‘wenn ein staat ins gras beißt, singen die dichter: The Wende in Poetry’, in Memory Traces: 1989 and the Question of German Cultural Identity, ed. Silke Arnold-de Simine (2005), pp.151-180
Commissioned for a book on memory organisation in the post-unification period, this chapter demonstrates how poetry memorializes the German Wende as a death. It particularly analyses poets’ bold use of biblical and Classical mythologies to counter a sense of defeat, as well as their compelling employment of poetic technique to expose tired binary thinking on German unity. The depiction of memories in poetry draws links to film and to the museum, as rival models for the preservation of the past.
Link to the book
· ‘Germania im Bunker: German Urban Landscapes in Contemporary Poetry’, in Cityscapes and Countryside in Contemporary German Literature, eds. Julian Preece and Osman Durrani (2004), pp.29-44
Originally a conference paper, this chapter argues that contemporary portrayals of urban landscapes share a complex of associations and motifs that centre around mortality. Identifying the predominance of violence and war in these representations of environments, it examines various versions of the subterranean or submarine anti-Heimat, and suggests that the cityscape beneath the surface is a repressed national past. The urban landscape is interpreted in terms of a Classical Hades and a Freudian consciousness, with references to models of the city in German literature of the 1920s and the 1950s.
Link to the book
· ‘The Colonizing West: Poetry by Heiner Müller, Steffen Mensching and Bert Papenfuß in the 1990s’, in Legacies and Identity: East and West German Literary Responses to Unification, ed. Martin Kane (2002), pp.113-126
For writers who had remained in the GDR, German unification in 1990 brought a sudden confrontation with a commercial, media-rich society. In Die deutsche Einheit und die Schriftsteller, Volker Wehdeking asserted that amongst writers from East and West there is broad acceptance of unification as a favourable development. This article (commissioned by the external examiner of my doctoral thesis) demonstrates that poetry by three important ex-GDR writers gives a contrary impression: Heiner Müller’s posthumously published poetry, the Berliner Elegien of Steffen Mensching, and Bert Papenfuß’s epic mors ex nihilo each make a striking rejection of capitalism. These poets have written unification in terms of conquest by the West. Their poetry presents itself as a last platform on which to argue that the world could be different. Even as it makes its gestures against western neo-colonialism, however, the poems themselves seem to become overrun and occupied by the language of western commerce.
Link to the book
Commissioned for a book on memory organisation in the post-unification period, this chapter demonstrates how poetry memorializes the German Wende as a death. It particularly analyses poets’ bold use of biblical and Classical mythologies to counter a sense of defeat, as well as their compelling employment of poetic technique to expose tired binary thinking on German unity. The depiction of memories in poetry draws links to film and to the museum, as rival models for the preservation of the past.
Link to the book
· ‘Germania im Bunker: German Urban Landscapes in Contemporary Poetry’, in Cityscapes and Countryside in Contemporary German Literature, eds. Julian Preece and Osman Durrani (2004), pp.29-44
Originally a conference paper, this chapter argues that contemporary portrayals of urban landscapes share a complex of associations and motifs that centre around mortality. Identifying the predominance of violence and war in these representations of environments, it examines various versions of the subterranean or submarine anti-Heimat, and suggests that the cityscape beneath the surface is a repressed national past. The urban landscape is interpreted in terms of a Classical Hades and a Freudian consciousness, with references to models of the city in German literature of the 1920s and the 1950s.
Link to the book
· ‘The Colonizing West: Poetry by Heiner Müller, Steffen Mensching and Bert Papenfuß in the 1990s’, in Legacies and Identity: East and West German Literary Responses to Unification, ed. Martin Kane (2002), pp.113-126
For writers who had remained in the GDR, German unification in 1990 brought a sudden confrontation with a commercial, media-rich society. In Die deutsche Einheit und die Schriftsteller, Volker Wehdeking asserted that amongst writers from East and West there is broad acceptance of unification as a favourable development. This article (commissioned by the external examiner of my doctoral thesis) demonstrates that poetry by three important ex-GDR writers gives a contrary impression: Heiner Müller’s posthumously published poetry, the Berliner Elegien of Steffen Mensching, and Bert Papenfuß’s epic mors ex nihilo each make a striking rejection of capitalism. These poets have written unification in terms of conquest by the West. Their poetry presents itself as a last platform on which to argue that the world could be different. Even as it makes its gestures against western neo-colonialism, however, the poems themselves seem to become overrun and occupied by the language of western commerce.
Link to the book
posted by Ruth J. Owen at
12:38
