Modernity and the Text

The study of Austrian and German modernist literature has a long and venerable history in this country. There have been no attempts yet, however, to reassess German and Austrian literary modernism in light of current discussion of modernity and postmodernity. Addressing a set of historical and theoretical questions central to current reevaluations of modernism, this volume presents American readers with a state-of-the-art account of German modernism studies in the eighties.

Essays by Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Russell A. Berman, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Judith Ryan, Mark Anderson, Klaus R. Scherpe, Biddy Martin, Klaus L. Berghahn and Acbar Abbas, center around German and Austrian literary and philosophical prose of the early twentieth century. texts by well-known authors -Kafka, Rilke, Musil, Doblin, Benjamin, Benn, and Junger - and less well-known ones -Franz Jung, Carl Einstein, Ernst Bloch, Lou Andreas-Salome, are examined.

Particular attention is paid to the processes and strategies by which certain experiences of "modern life" are translated into modern aesthetic forms.

The unique contribution of this volume is that it combines theory with an attempt to reintroduce an historical and contextual dimension. The authors believe that their revisions of Ausrian and German modernism will themselves be informed by a new set of questions pertinent to the modernist debate.

The study of Austrian and German modernist literature has a long and venerable history in this country. There have been no attempts yet, however, to reassess German and Austrian literary modernism in light of current discussion of modernity and postmodernity. Addressing a set of historical and theoretical questions central to current reevaluations of modernism, this volume presents American readers with a state-of-the-art account of German modernism studies in the eighties.

Essays by Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Russell A. Berman, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Judith Ryan, Mark Anderson, Klaus R. Scherpe, Biddy Martin, Klaus L. Berghahn and Acbar Abbas, center around German and Austrian literary and philosophical prose of the early twentieth century. texts by well-known authors -Kafka, Rilke, Musil, Doblin, Benjamin, Benn, and Junger - and less well-known ones -Franz Jung, Carl Einstein, Ernst Bloch, Lou Andreas-Salome, are examined.

Particular attention is paid to the processes and strategies by which certain experiences of "modern life" are translated into modern aesthetic forms.

The unique contribution of this volume is that it combines theory with an attempt to reintroduce an historical and contextual dimension. The authors believe that their revisions of Ausrian and German modernism will themselves be informed by a new set of questions pertinent to the modernist debate.

Acknowledgments
Modernism and the Experience of Modernity, by David Bathrick and Andreas Huyssen
Part I. The Avant-Garde: Politics and the Text
Speaking the Other's Silence: Franz Jung's Der Fall Gross, by David Bathrick
Carl Einstein; or, The Postmodern Transformation of Modernism, by Jochen Schulte-Sasse
Written Right Across Their Faces: Ernst Junger's Fascist Modernism, by Russell A. Berman
The Loss of Reality: Gottfried Benn's Early Prose, by Peter Uwe Hohendahl
Each One as She May: Melanctha, Tonka, Nadja, by Judith Ryan
Part II. Modernist Cities: Paris-New York-Berlin
Paris / Childhood: The Fragmented Body in Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, by Andreas Huyssen
Kafka and New York: Notes on a Traveling Narrative, by Mark Anderson
The City as Narrator: The Modern Text in Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Klaus R. Scherpe
Part III. Writing and Modernist Thought
Woman and Modernity: The [Life]Styles of Lou Andreas-Salome, by Biddy Martin
A View Through the Red Window: Ernst Bloch's Spuren, by Klaus L. Berghahn
Walter Benjamin's Collector: The Fate of Modern Experience, by Ackbar Abbas
Index