Literary Freedom And Social Constraints In The Works Of Swiss Writer Gertrud Leutenegger

This work analyzes texts by contemporary Swiss writer Gertrud Leutenegger in regard to the interrelationship of literary freedom and social constraints by applying different discursive variants of literary discourse analysis. How do the enigmatic texts written in an idiosyncratic and unique style, filled with myths and codes of dream and life sequences relate to the Swiss environment? Are they just free associations and combinations constituting an esoteric utopia? Is Gertrud Leutenegger ortslos as Martin Roda Becher defines postmodern writers? Critical approaches of several schools of literary criticism; feminism, male gender studies, psychoanalysis, mythology, theory of style, linguistics, and sociolinguistics contrast the functional textual differentiations. A wide interdisciplinary need in literary projects is thus disclosed. Therefore, this volume is of interest for scholars of all branches of social and literary sciences. Unprecedented are the models of masculinity and the images of men derived from a first person singular narrative by a Swiss woman writer. She works through the ontological process of subjectivity reflected in the image of a patriarch governor and an Italian immigrant. The chapter on Swissness in the Text is of crucial importance concerning the categorization of German Literature and questions about minor literature. This socio-critical analysis shows that there is a transcendence between the writing subject-(author) and literature. Yet, the body can be retrieved from literature since das Herz muss im Korper belassen werden, als Sitz der Erkenntnis, as Gertrud Leutenegger says. All her texts are body writings; her words originate in the female body experiencing constraints in Switzerland."

This work analyzes texts by contemporary Swiss writer Gertrud Leutenegger in regard to the interrelationship of literary freedom and social constraints by applying different discursive variants of literary discourse analysis. How do the enigmatic texts written in an idiosyncratic and unique style, filled with myths and codes of dream and life sequences relate to the Swiss environment? Are they just free associations and combinations constituting an esoteric utopia? Is Gertrud Leutenegger ortslos as Martin Roda Becher defines postmodern writers? Critical approaches of several schools of literary criticism; feminism, male gender studies, psychoanalysis, mythology, theory of style, linguistics, and sociolinguistics contrast the functional textual differentiations. A wide interdisciplinary need in literary projects is thus disclosed. Therefore, this volume is of interest for scholars of all branches of social and literary sciences. Unprecedented are the models of masculinity and the images of men derived from a first person singular narrative by a Swiss woman writer. She works through the ontological process of subjectivity reflected in the image of a patriarch governor and an Italian immigrant. The chapter on Swissness in the Text is of crucial importance concerning the categorization of German Literature and questions about minor literature. This socio-critical analysis shows that there is a transcendence between the writing subject-(author) and literature. Yet, the body can be retrieved from literature since das Herz muß im Körper belassen werden, als Sitz der Erkenntnis, as Gertrud Leutenegger says. All her texts are body writings; her words originate in the female body experiencing constraints in Switzerland.

This volume makes the wide-ranging work of German women writers visible to a wider audience. It is the first work in English to provide a chronological introduction to and overview of women's writing in German-speaking countries from the Middle Ages to the present day. Extensive guides to further reading and a bibliographical guide to the work of more than 400 women writers form an integral part of the volume, which will be indispensable for students and scholars of German literature, and all those interested in women's and gender studies.

This study shows that Cervantes’s works actively influenced the literature of a number of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century writers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This time period was marked by numerous significant events, including World War I, the first attempts at democracy, the rise of the Nazis, World War II, the division of Germany, and the eventual reunification of Germany. Representations of characters created by Cervantes reflect the shifting viewpoints of monarchism, imperialism, communism, fascism, socialism, and capitalism. A number of German-speaking authors of this time creatively modify Don Quixote, vacillating between regarding Don Quixote as a fool or a hero. The emphasis here is on the question of how an author uses Cervantes’s Don Quixote and The Conversation of the Dogs to come to terms with his or her own preoccupations in a given socio-political context. This book explores literary works by German-speaking authors that engage in an intertextual play with a text written by Cervantes.

Women in German Yearbook is a refereed publication that presents a wide range of feminist approaches to all aspects of German literary, cultural, and language studies, including pedagogy. Each issue contains critical studies on the work, history, life, literature, and arts of women in the German-speaking world, reflecting the interdisciplinary perspectives that inform feminist German studies.

A Space of Anxietyengages with a body of German-Jewish literature that, from the beginning of the century onwards, explores notions of identity and kinship in the context of migration, exile and persecution. The study offers an engaging analysis of how Freud, Kafka, Roth, Drach and Hilsenrath employ, to varying degrees, the travel paradigm to question those borders and boundaries that define the space between the self and the other. A Space of Anxietyargues that from Freud to Hilsenrath, German-Jewish literature emerges from an ambivalent space of enunciation which challenges the great narrative of an historical identity authenticated by an originary past. Inspired by postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories, the author shows that modern German-Jewish writers inhabit a Third Space which poses an alternative to an understanding of culture as a homogeneous tradition based on (national) unity.By endeavouring to explore this third space in examples of modern German-Jewish literature, the volume also aims to contribute to recent efforts to rewriting literary history. In retracing the inherent ambivalence in how German-Jewish literature situates itself in cultural discourse, this study focuses on how this literature subverts received notions of identity and racial boundaries. The study is of interest to students of German literature, German-Jewish literature and Cultural Studies.