Sebald's Vision

by Carol Jacobs

Overview

W. G. Sebald's writing has been widely recognized for its intense, nuanced engagement with the Holocaust, the Allied bombing of Germany in WWII, and other episodes of violence throughout history. Through his inventive use of narrative form and juxtaposition of image and text, Sebald's work has offered readers new ways to think about remembering and representing trauma.

In Sebald's Vision, Carol Jacobs examines the author's prose, novels, and poems, illuminating the ethical and aesthetic questions that shaped his remarkable oeuvre. Through the trope of "vision," Jacobs explores aspects of Sebald's writing and the way the author's indirect depiction of events highlights the ethical imperative of representing history while at the same time calling into question the possibility of such representation.

Jacobs's lucid readings of Sebald's work also consider his famous juxtaposition of images and use of citations to explain his interest in the vagaries of perception. Isolating different ideas of vision in some of his most noted works, including Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz, and After Nature, as well as in Sebald's interviews, poetry, art criticism, and his lecture Air War and Literature, Jacobs introduces new perspectives for understanding the distinctiveness of Sebald's work and its profound moral implications.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231171823
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	10/20/2015
Series:	Literature Now
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	1,041,462
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carol Jacobs is the Birgit Baldwin Professor of Comparative Literature and also professor of German literature at Yale University. Her books include Skirting the Ethical; In the Language of Walter Benjamin; Telling Time: Levi-Strauss, Ford, Lessing, Benjamin, de Man, Wordsworth, Rilke; and Uncontainable Romanticism: Shelley, Bronte, Kleist.

Table of Contents

Preface: "Sebald's Vision"
Acknowledgments
1. "Like the snow on the Alps": After Nature
2. What Does It Mean to Count?: The Emigrants
3. Frames and Excursions: Rings of Saturn
4. Toward an Epistemology of Citation: "Air War and Literature"
5. A is for Austerlitz: Austerlitz
6. Déjà vu or. . . : "Like Day and Night—On the Pictures of Jan Peter Tripp"
7. A Critical Eye: The Interviews
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

07/13/2015
In a series of close readings, Jacobs perceptively analyzes how W.G. Sebald’s books have represented, and sometimes obscured, the author’s exacting worldview. During Sebald’s relatively brief career (he only published four works of fiction before his death in 2001), he was able to achieve an astonishing amount of his artistic vision for German postwar literature. Jacobs moves chronologically through most of Sebald’s works, starting with the long poem After Nature and then going on to the novels The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Austerlitz. She also examines his nonfiction and essays, as well as major interviews Sebald gave at several points in his career. Her examination finds that Sebald confronted the horrors of the 20th century indirectly, through citations of paintings, photographs, and other artworks, rather than head on. That being said, Jacobs shows that Sebald did not remain neutral in historical matters, but reserved a strong moral judgment for those who evade the truth. The book does not give much sense of the greater literary or cultural context to Sebald’s work. Nonetheless, it will leave serious readers with plenty to contemplate regarding Sebald’s aesthetic and moral insights. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Her focus on the gaze does indeed offer a striking insight into Sebald's complex representations of history.... Jacobs' book will doubtless make a long-lasting contribution to Sebald criticism.

Times Higher Education - Simon Ward

In Sebald's Vision, Jacobs not only grants insight into the enigmatic source of Sebald's aesthetic authority but also provides a model of ethical reading that is grounded in the unsettling maxim she locates in his writing: 'Each time different perspectives.'

Peter Fenves

Carol Jacobs's Sebald's Vision provides one of the first all-encompassing studies of W. G. Sebald. The match could not be better: one of the foremost literary scholars in the United States takes on the work of one of the best-known German-speaking authors of the twentieth century. The result is remarkable. Jacobs's careful, patient readings draw out the insights and blind spots of Sebald's influential oeuvre.

Elke Siegel

Attentive at every turn to the highly unusual literary practices of W. G. Sebald's texts, Jacobs asks whether such a radical stylistics can be reconciled with moral certitude, and, if not, what are the consequences? A work of great patience, stamina, and critical vigilance, Sebald's Vision is meticulously researched, beautifully written, and certain to become the standard by which future work on this important writer is measured.

Michael G. Levine

An important addition to the criticism on this fascinating writer. Highly recommended.

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