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Presents Stifter's multi-faceted oeuvre to both a German Studies and non-specialized Anglophone audience, showing today's readers the relevance of its concerns.The canonical nineteenth-century Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), long considered a staid stylist - if not mannerist - and a conservative-bourgeois apologist, has recently become the subject of more vibrant literary-theoretical approaches. While Stifter is primarily known for his fictional prose, including two lengthy novels (
Der Nachsommer [Indian Summer] and
Witiko) and numerous novella-length narratives, he also wrote dozens of cultural-political and scientific essays. Moreover, his professional activity in the Austrian school system and his diverse publications in the realm of pedagogy not only shed interpretive light on his literary production but also inform enduring debates on education reform and the intellectual-historical question of
Bildung. This volume covers a wide range of texts and topics within Stifter's oeuvre. With respect to literary-historical coverage, it extends from his earliest tale
Der Condor (The Condor, 1840) to his posthumously published chronicle
Aus dem bairischen Walde (From the Bavarian Forest, 1868); in terms of genre, it embraces his novels and novellas, his essayistic work, and even his landscape paintings; finally, it pursues a host of deeper problems and thematic strands that permeate his texts and make them relevant to readers today. These include (neo-)conservatism, social unrest, law and order, ecology, climatology, bioregionalism, and the Anthropocene.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works
Introduction: Stifter's Life and Works
Sean Ireton
Part I: Genre and Style1. Stifter's Epic Style -
Tove Holmes2. Stifter and the Genre Conventions of Cultural Journalism -
Sean Franzel3. All Eyes on the Streets: Transformations of Public Work, Leisure, and Ritual in
Wien und die Wiener - Vance Byrd4. Stifter's Late Style -
Samuel Frederick Part II: Texts and Contexts5. The Birth of Realism out of the Spirit of Melodrama: Stifter's
Feldblumen - Erica Weitzman6. Backward Glances: Registers of the Past in Stifter's
Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters - Jessica C. Resvick7. Lessons from Stifter's
Bunte Steine - Zachary Sng8. Absence and Omnipresence: On the Significance of Waste in Stifter's
Der Nachsommer - Lars Rosenbaum Part III: Elements and Environments9. Stifter's Stones -
Jason Groves10.Stifter's Glaciers -
Matthew H. Birkhold11.Cheerful Terror: Stifter and the Aesthetics of Atmosphere -
Alexander Robert Phillips12.Stifter's Bavarian-Bohemian Bioregionalism -
Sean IretonSelected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
Edited by Sean Ireton
Summary
Presents Stifter's multi-faceted oeuvre to both a German Studies and non-specialized Anglophone audience, showing today's readers the relevance of its concerns.
