Lynne Tatlock

Kurt Beals

A collection of new essays bringing into view the push and pull of the national and the international in the German-language cultural field of the period. The cultural formations of the so-called Age of Nationalism (1848-1919) have shaped German-language literary studies to the present day, for better or worse. Literary histories, German self-representations, the view from abroad - all of these perspectives offer images of a culture ever more concerned with formulating a coherent, nationally focused idea of its origins, history, and cultural community. But even in this historical moment the German-speaking territories were not culturally self-contained; international forces always played a significant role in the constitution of the so-called "German" literary and cultural field. This volume rethinks the historical period with fourteen case studies that bring into view the push and pull of the national and international in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, undertaking a reframing of literary-cultural history that recognizes the interrelatedness of literatures and cultures across political and linguistic boundaries. Viewing even overtly national literary and cultural projects as belonging to an international system, these case studies examine the interrelations, organization, and positioning of the agents, forces, enterprises, and processes that constituted the German-language literary-cultural field, locating these ostensibly national developments within an inter- or even anti-national context.

German Literature As a Transnational Field of Production, 1848-1919

Cross-disciplinary perspectives on responses to material and spiritual loss in early modern Germany trace how individuals and communities registered, coped with, and made sense of deprivation through a spectrum of activities, often turning loss into gain and acquiring agency.

Cross Disciplinary Perspectives

Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany

Lynne Tatlock examines the transmission, diffusion, and literary survival of Jane Eyre in the German-speaking territories and the significance and effects thereof, 1848-1918. Engaging with scholarship on the romance novel, she presents an historical case study of the generative power and protean nature of Brontë's new romance narrative in German translation, adaptation, and imitation as it involved multiple agents, from writers and playwrights to readers, publishers, illustrators, reviewers, editors, adaptors, and translators. Jane Eyre in German Lands traces the ramifications in the paths of transfer that testify to widespread creative investment in romance as new ideas of women's freedom and equality topped the horizon and sought a home, especially in the middle classes. As Tatlock outlines, the multiple German instantiations of Brontë's novel-four translations, three abridgments, three adaptations for general readers, nine adaptations for younger readers, plays, farces, and particularly the fiction of the popular German writer E. Marlitt and its many adaptations-evince a struggle over its meaning and promise. Yet precisely this multiplicity (repetition, redundancy, and proliferation) combined with the romance narrative's intrinsic appeal in the decades between the March Revolutions and women's franchise enabled the cultural diffusion, impact, and long-term survival of Jane Eyre as German reading. Though its focus on the circulation of texts across linguistic boundaries and intertwined literary markets and reading cultures, Jane Eyre in German Lands unsettles the national paradigm of literary history and makes a case for a fuller and inclusive account of the German literary field.

The Import of Romance, 18481918

Jane Eyre in German Lands

Matt Erlin

Essays examining the circulation and adaptation of German culture in the United States during the long 19th century.

Reception, Adaptation, Transformation

German Culture in Nineteenth-century America

Untersuchungen zum deutschen Roman der frühen Neuzeit

Konstruktion

Explores the concept of "distant reading" and its application to the analysis of nineteenth-century German literature and culture, drawing on a range of approaches from the emerging digital humanities field.

Topologies of German Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century

Distant Readings

Gendered Culture in Early Modern Germany 1500-1700

The Graph of Sex and the German Text

Essays examining aspects of German book history -- in relation to writers, readers, and publishers -- from the 1780s to the 1930s.

Lynne Tatlock

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