The Case of Christian Kracht

The Case of Christian Kracht
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2024-04-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004694102

The bestselling, contemporary Swiss author Christian Kracht is as widely celebrated as he is a source of controversy. This introduction to his work suggests locating his writings in discourses that range beyond the labels that have been traditionally assigned to them, namely “postmodernism,” camp,” and “Popliteratur.” Instead, this volume considers Kracht’s work through the lenses of “authorship,” “irony,” and “globalism.” This volume argues that there is no fixed or uniform author represented in Kracht’s corpus, explores the ironic strategies involved in Kracht’s various authorial representations, and engages the cultural exchange inherent in Kracht’s work.

Christian Kracht‘s Aesthetics

Christian Kracht‘s Aesthetics
Author: Susanne Komfort-Hein
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2023-07-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3476059588

The contributions to this volume are devoted to Christian Kracht's aesthetics under two main aspects: On the one hand, with regard to sometimes irritatingly twisted actualizations of that self-reference and reservation which, since Kant, is to be evaluated as a central mode of the aesthetic; on the other hand, with regard to interferences with areas that are usually perceived as extra-aesthetic, but which can be evaluated as ferments of contemporary aesthetics: Stagings in the field of the literary establishment, the aesthetic under media and market conditions, and in the focus of canonization and criticism. Kracht's Frankfurt Poetics Lectures, which were intensively commented on by the media, form the background to this discussion.

Distant Kinship

Distant Kinship
Author: Matthias N. Lorenz
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2022-07-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3476058786

This study of Joseph Conrad's influential work "Heart of Darkness" presents for the first time the German-language reception of this reference text in the debate on postcolonialism. The spectrum ranges from Conrad's contemporaries (like Kafka) to many canonical authors of the 20th century (including Thomas Mann, Ernst Jünger, Christa Wolf) to the most recent names in literature (i.e. Christian Kracht und Lukas Bärfuss). Beyond the readings of their works, the study contributes to the study of cultural transfers as well as to Conrad philology, and it expands the theory of intertextuality with parameters that capture the complex factor of power in postcolonial relations.

Author and Narrator

Author and Narrator
Author: Dorothee Birke
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110348551

The distinction between author and narrator is one of the cornerstones of narrative theory. In the past two decades, however, scope, implications and consequences of this distinction have become the subjects of debate. This volume offers contributions to these debates from different vantage points: literary studies, linguistics, philosophy, and media studies. It thus manifests the status of narrative theory as a transdisciplinary project.

Imperium

Imperium
Author: Christian Kracht
Publisher: Picador
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-11-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781250097477

Winner of the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize One of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of 2015 A Huffington Post Best Fiction Book of the Year In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island of Kabakon. His goal: to establish a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was forty-three years old. In his first novel to be translated into English, internationally bestselling author Christian Kracht uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt’s life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. “A Melvillean masterpiece of the South Seas” (Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire), Imperium is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant---sometimes all on the same page.

The Draw of the Alps

The Draw of the Alps
Author: Richard McClelland
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2023-10-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3111150682

The Alps have exerted a hold over the German cultural imagination throughout the modern period, enthralling writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and tourists alike. The Draw of the Alps interrogates the dynamics of this fascination. Though philosophical and aesthetic responses to Alpine space have shifted over time, the Alps continue to captivate at an individual and collective level. This has resulted in myriad cultural engagements with Alpine space, as this interdisciplinary volume attests. Literature, photography, and philosophy continue to engage with the Alps as a place in which humans pursue their cognitive and aesthetic limits. At the same time, individuals engage physically with the alpine environment, whether as visitors through the well-established leisure industry, as enthusiasts of extreme sports, or as residents who feel the acute end of social and environmental change. Taking a transnational view of Alpine space, the volume demonstrates that the Alps are not geographically peripheral to the nation-state but are a vibrant locus of modern cultural production. As The Draw of the Alps attests, the Alps are nothing less than a crucible in which understandings of what it means to be human have been forged.

Transnationalism in Contemporary German-language Literature

Transnationalism in Contemporary German-language Literature
Author: German Studies Association. Conference
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2015
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1571139257

"Transnationalism" has become a key term in debates in the social sciences and humanities, reflecting concern with today's unprecedented flows of commodities, fashions, ideas, and people across national borders. Forced and unforced mobility, intensified cross-border economic activity due to globalization, and the rise of trans- and supranational organizations are just some of the ways in which we now live both within, across, and beyond national borders. Literature has always been a means of border crossing and transgression-whether by tracing physical movement, reflecting processes of cultural transfer, traveling through space and time, or mapping imaginary realms. It is also becoming more and more a "moving medium" that creates a transnational space by circulating around the world, both reflecting on the reality of transnationalism and participating in it. This volume refines our understanding of transnationalism both as a contemporary reality and as a concept and an analytical tool. Engaging with the work of such writers as Christian Kracht, Ilija Trojanow, Julya Rabinowich, Charlotte Roche, Helene Hegemann, Antje R vic Strubel, Juli Zeh, Friedrich D rrenmatt, and Wolfgang Herrndorf, it builds on the excellent work that has been done in recent years on "minority" writers; German-language literature, globalization, and "world literature"; and gender and sexuality in relation to the "nation." Contributors: Hester Baer, Anke S. Biendarra, Claudia Breger, Katharina Gerstenberger, Elisabeth Herrmann, Christina Kraenzle, Maria Mayr, Tanja Nusser, Lars Richter, Carrie Smith-Prei, Faye Stewart, Stuart Taberner. Elisabeth Herrmann is Associate Professor of German at Stockholm University. Carrie Smith-Prei is Associate Professor of German at the University of Alberta. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture and Society at the University of Leeds and is a Research Associate in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch; German and French at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

Alternate History

Alternate History
Author: Kathleen Singles
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110272474

While, strictly speaking, Alternate Histories are not Future Narratives, their analysis can shed a clear light on why Future Narratives are so different from past narratives. Trying to have it both ways, most Alternate Histories subscribe to a conflicting set of beliefs concerning determinism and freedom of choice, contingency and necessity. For the very first time, Alternate Histories are here discussed against the backdrop of their Other, Future Narratives. The volume contains in-depth analyses of the classics of the genre,such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle and Philip Roth's The Plot against America, as well as less widely-discussed manifestations of the genre, such as Dieter Kühn's N, Christian Kracht's Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, and Quentin Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds.

Imperium

Imperium
Author: Christian Kracht
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374175241

A satirical indictment of extremism follows the exploits of a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg who voyages to 1902's Bismarck Archipelago to establish a colony based on the worship of the sun and coconuts.

Juli Zeh

Juli Zeh
Author: Necia Chronister
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2024-09-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3111352242

This volume casts a critical light on one of Germany’s bestselling and most controversial authors. Juli Zeh’s literary work is not only widely read in Germany, but also featured on high school and college syllabi both in Germany and abroad. In recent years and in the wake of the Covid 19 lockdowns, Zeh’s output has only increased, though her most recent work, Unterleuten (2016), Über Menschen (2021), and Zwischen Welten (2023; co-written with Simon Urban), has evolved away from the literary and philosophical thought that informed her more nuanced earlier work and towards a more conservative representation of contemporary social dynamics. While her work continues to garner prestigious awards, Zeh herself, who is an honorary judge at the Brandenburg constitutional court and a seemingly omnipresent public intellectual, has taken increasingly libertarian positions in recent political debates -- whether about Germany’s public health measures in response to the pandemic, or the country’s role in the Ukraine war. This volume traces the development and broad impact of Zeh’s writing while reflecting on the responsibility of the scholars who read and teach it to confront her ambiguous and sometimes troubling politics.