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Zusatztext ...demonstrates that although the picaro belongs to certain times! it is also a figure of ambivalent transcendence! celebrating resilience and its satisfactions over solemnity and its imperatives. - Benjamin Robinson! Indiana University Bloomington Informationen zum Autor Bernhard F. Malkmus is Associate Professor of German at The Ohio State University, USA. Klappentext The German Pícaro and Modernity reads the re-emergence of the picaresque narrative in twentieth-century German-language writing as an expression of modernity and its social imaginaries. Malkmus argues that the picaresque, whose origins date back to the Spanish Renaissance and the Baroque Age, re-emerged as a reflection both of Germany's explosive modernizing processes between 1880 and 1930 and of the most barbarous implosion of modern civilization under National Socialism. Another reason for the fertility of this literary form at that particular cultural moment is rooted in the complexities of German-Jewish relations and the history of Jewish assimilation in central Europe. A considerable number of authors who used the picaresque form in the twentieth century are from a Jewish background, and Malkmus demonstrates how the picaresque narrative template also offers a medium for German-Jewish self-reflection. In highlighting these connections, he contributes not only to scholarship in European literature, but also but also to our understanding of major social, economic and political issues at stake in modernityThe first comprehensive English-language study of the modern German picaresque tradition. Zusammenfassung The German Pícaro and Modernity reads the re-emergence of the picaresque narrative in twentieth-century German-language writing as an expression of modernity and its social imaginaries. Malkmus argues that the picaresque, whose origins date back to the Spanish Renaissance and the Baroque Age, re-emerged as a reflection both of Germany's explosive modernizing processes between 1880 and 1930 and of the most barbarous implosion of modern civilization under National Socialism. Another reason for the fertility of this literary form at that particular cultural moment is rooted in the complexities of German-Jewish relations and the history of Jewish assimilation in central Europe. A considerable number of authors who used the picaresque form in the twentieth century are from a Jewish background, and Malkmus demonstrates how the picaresque narrative template also offers a medium for German-Jewish self-reflection. In highlighting these connections, he contributes not only to scholarship in European literature, but also but also to our understanding of major social, economic and political issues at stake in modernity Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments Introduction Boxing (In) Life Stories Chapter One The Spanish Picaresque Tradition and Its European Repercussions Chapter Two "Students Who Have Lost the Holy Writ": Franz Kafka's Der Verschollene Chapter Three Students Who Have Lost Their Teachers: Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten Picaresque Topoi I Tertium Datur: Between Autonomy and Self-Preservation Chapter Four The Confidence Man as Shape-Shifter: Thomas Mann's Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull Picaresque Topoi II Third Space: A Stage for the Modern Pícaro Chapter Five The Shape-Shifter as Underdog: Edgar Hilsenrath's Der Nazi und der Friseur Picaresque Topoi III Third Agents: The Inclusion of the Excluded Chapter Six The Eternal Recurrence of the Picaresque Body: Günter Grass' Die Blechtrommel Conclusion Drumming (Out) Life Stories Bibliography Index ...
