A Literary Occupation

Responses of German writers in service in occupied Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-420-3770-0
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 168, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 373 g

Reihe: Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft

Pax in Bello, peace in the midst of war, was the motto one writer chose to signify the private dilemma: how could the humanist, clad in the uniform of the occupier, write of liberal values, see with a liberal eye – and publish, or hope to? From the armistice peace of occupied France, from the partisan war and incipient civil war of Greece, from the all-out warfare in southern Russia, came writing that revealed not just the everyday split consciousness resulting from the overlay of Nazi ideology, but writing also that circumvented and in places subverted the propaganda imperative which then governed everything in print.

For a European community that now sees itself as exemplar and upholder of liberal democratic values, the study of that first great test of modern liberal conscience is instructive. Some essayed the test in the craft of writing, and came away with some honour. Their works are examined in this book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Keeffe, William J.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
A civil literature in an uncivil time
The propaganda imperative
Literary conscripts
A Franco-Hellenic axis
The German philhellenic paradigm
The literary-critical focus: the aesthetic
A reappraisal of critical reception
Prevailing literary form
The Kriegstagebuch: mastery and criticism
Editions and source texts: methodology
Kulturpolitik: courtship, custodianship
Myth and realities
France: the centrality of Paris
Greece: apprehending the antique
Literature on two fronts
Involuntary tourism
The Francophile’s dilemma
Culture shock: the East
Applied fictive form
Aesthetic dissidence
Erhart Göpel’s Die Normandie and Die Bretagne
Göpel and Erhart Kästner: freedom of the aesthete
Griechenland/Kreta: repossession of classical Greece
Aesthetic of light: Erhart Kästner and Felix Hartlaub
Aesthetic of stone: Kästner’s appeal for moderation
Mentioning the war: classical elision
The redundancy of revision
Kästner, Hauptmann, Heidegger: Wortwunder
Felix Hartlaub: Paris underground
Formative influences on Weltanschauung
The migrant flâneur
Idle pursuit? The wartime flâneur
Hartlaub: the writing persona
Doppelgänger: Hartlaub and “Er”
Phenomenology of a city
Erzählte Zeit: relegation of chronological time
Occupation: alien aesthetic
Sub-texts of subversion
Colour as agent
The centrality of the Paris sketches: critical reception
Lacunae, resistance speculation, death of a flâneur
Conclusion
Fortunes of war
The modes of literary response: an evaluation
Bibliography
Illustrations