Christa Wolf: A Companion

by Sonja E. Klocke (Editor), Jennifer R. Hosek (Editor)

Overview

Interest in Christa Wolf continues to grow. Her classics are being reprinted and new titles are appearing posthumously, becoming bestsellers, and being translated. Energetic scholarly debates engage well-known aesthetic and political issues that the public intellectual herself fore-fronted. This broad-ranging introduction to the author, her work and times builds upon and moves beyond such foundational interpretative frameworks by articulating the global relevance of Wolf’s oeuvre today, also for non-German readers. Thus, it brings East German culture alive to students, teachers, scholars and the general public by connecting the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the lived experiences of its citizens to nations and cultures around the world. The collection focuses on topical matters including the search for authenticity, agency, race, cosmopolitanism, gender, environmentalism, geopolitics, war, and memory debates, as well as movie adaptations and Wolf’s film work with DEFA, marketing, and international reception. Our contributions – by senior and emerging scholars from across the globe – emphasize Wolf’s position as an author of world literature and an important critical voice in the 21st century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110491999
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	03/19/2018
Series:	Companions to Contemporary German Culture , #8
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sonja E. Klocke, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA; Jennifer R. Hosek, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reading Christa Wolf in the Twenty-First Century Sonja E. Klocke Jennifer R. Hosek 1

Modernity and the City in Christa Wolf's Oeuvre of the 1960s Curtis Swope 35

Narrative Topographies in Christa Wolf's Oeuvre Regine Criser 51

The Gendered Reception of Christa Wolf Anna K. Kuhn 65

Unearthing a Post-Humanist Ecological Socialism in Christa Wolf's 'Selbstversuch', Kassandra and Störfall Deborah Janson 81

Nature, Power and Literature: Rereading Christa Wolf's Störfall Nachrichten eines Tages as 'Ecological Force' in Times of Climate Crisis Sabine von Mering 97

Literature and Visual Art in Christa Wolf's Sommerstück (1989) and Was bleibt (1990) Roswitha Skare 113

Learning from the Underground: Christa Wolf and the Fourth Generation of GDR Writers Anna Horakova 131

From Pan-German Cosmopolitanism to Nostalgic National Insularity: A Comparative Study of Christa Wolf's Kassandra and Medea John Pizer 147

Christa Wolf's Trouble with Race Beverly M. Weber 163

Towards a Late Style? Christa Wolf on Old Age, Death and Creativity in Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud Catherine Smale 181

The Protocol of Barriers to Thinking? Wolf's Moskauer Tagebücher. Wer wir sind und wer wir waren (2014) Birgit Dahlke 201

Translating Subjective Authenticity from Christa T. to Stadt der Engel and August: Re-presenting Christa Wolf's Subaltern Voice Caroline Summers 219

From Political-Realistic Reading to Multiperspectival Understanding: The Reception of Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel In China Yutian Chen Fan Zhang 243

Reading Christa Wolf in Socialist Vietnam Huynh Mai Trinh 263

Christa Wolf: A Select Bibliography Collated Sonja E. Klocke 279

Contributors 293

Index 295