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Collective Creativity combines complex and ambivalent concepts. While ‘creativity’ is currently experiencing an inflationary boom in popularity, the term ‘collective’ appeared, until recently, rather controversial due to its ideological implications in twentieth-century politics. In a world defined by global cultural practice, the notion of collectivity has gained new relevance. This publication discusses a number of concepts of creativity and shows that, in opposition to the traditional ideal of the individual as creative genius, cultural theorists today emphasize the collaborative nature of creativity; they show that ‘creativity makes alterity, discontinuity and difference attrac...
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Young Hans arrives with one suitcase in a squalid village on the eastern edge of empire--a surreal postwar Austria. His uncle has died, and according to the tradition required by his people--the Bieresch--Hans must assume his uncle's place for one year. In a series of interactions with the village's tragicomic characters and their contradictory stories and scriptures, the reluctant Hans must face a world both familiar and alien. Among the Bieresch is Hans's story--one of bizarre customs, tangled relationships, and the struggle between two mystical sects. The novel, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, is a German cult favorite and a masterwork of culture shock fiction that revels in exploring oppressive cultural baggage and assimilation. Readers will encounter here an amalgam drawing from Kafka, Borges, and Beckett, among others, combining to make Klaus Hoffer's novel a world utterly its own. "One of the few works that will loom from the dust of this century one day."--Urs Widmer
How did Austrian writers grapple with their country's problematic twentieth-century history? Nine scholars investigate how the complex role of the national past changed the content and context of Austria's literature. Contributions range from Klaus Zeyringer's aggressive argument for an authentically Austrian literature, to the late Harry Zohn's autobiographical insights of a transplanted Viennese. Probing essays examine the Liberal and the National-Socialist era writers in exile and in their roles as post-war social critics. Shadows of the Past also puts the authors themselves in the spotlight: A «mini-reader» of hard-hitting as well as humorous narrative texts complements the literary history that begins the volume. Written by Barbara Frischmuth, Elisabeth Reichart, and Erich Wolfgang Skwara, these six texts are accompanied by helpful introductions to each author. As a further aid for English-speaking readers, the original in German literary and critical texts are translated for the first time. Shadows of the Past allows students of European culture and comparative literature to experience a dramatic century in Austrian literature and history.
This volume brings together two very popular and active research fields: Swiss Studies and Intercultural Studies. It includes contributions on the movement of ideas, literatures, and individuals from one culture to another or one language to another, and the ways in which they have been either assimilated or questioned. All of the writers explore this general theme; some come from a literary angle, some look at linguistic inventiveness and translation, whilst others study the problems faced when crossing geographical and cultural borders or presenting ideas which do not `travel¿ well. By emphasising the connections, borrowings and mutual influences between Switzerland and other countries su...
This study of Joseph Conrad's influential work "Heart of Darkness" presents for the first time the German-language reception of this reference text in the debate on postcolonialism. The spectrum ranges from Conrad's contemporaries (like Kafka) to many canonical authors of the 20th century (including Thomas Mann, Ernst Jünger, Christa Wolf) to the most recent names in literature (i.e. Christian Kracht und Lukas Bärfuss). Beyond the readings of their works, the study contributes to the study of cultural transfers as well as to Conrad philology, and it expands the theory of intertextuality with parameters that capture the complex factor of power in postcolonial relations.
Containing more than fifty essays by major literary scholars, International Postmodernism divides into four main sections. The volume starts off with a section of eight introductory studies dealing with the subject from different points of view followed by a section that deals with postmodernism in other arts than literature, while a third section discusses renovations of narrative genres and other strategies and devices in postmodernist writing. The final and fourth section deals with the reception and processing of postmodernism in different parts of the world. Three important aspects add to the special character of International Postmodernism: The consistent distinction between postmodern...
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