From Kafka to Sebald

Sabine Wilke is Professor of German at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, where she is also associated with European Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, and cultural studies. She has written books and articles on body constructions in modern German literature and culture, German unification, the history of German film and theater, contemporary German authors and filmmakers, German colonialism and the overlapping concerns of postcolonialism and ecocriticism.

This wide-ranging, sophisticated anthology provides impetus to the renewed interest in a scholarly narratological approach to prose fiction. By drawing an ark between Franz Kafka and W. G. Sebald... Wilke projects a whole spectrum of diverse narrative experiments. Ten expert scholars contribute findings which can readily be applied to modern narratives beyond any single national literature.

• Introduction: Kafka, Modernism, and BeyondSabine Wilke, University of Washington, USAI: Kafka's SlippagesRitardando in Das SchloßStanley Corngold, Princeton University, USAKafka's "A Hunger Artist" as Allegory of Bourgeois Subject ConstructionImke Meyer, University of Illinois at Chicago, USAII: Kafka EffectsHofmannsthal after 1918: The Present as ExileJens Rieckmann, University of California, Irvine, USAYvan Goll's Die Eurokokke: a Reading Through Walter Benjamin's Passagen-WerkRolf Goebel, University of Alabama in Huntsville, USAIII: Narrative TheoryElse Meets Dora: Narratology as a Tool for Illuminating Literary TraumaGail Finney, University of California, Davis, USA"Das kleine Ich": Robert Menasse and Masculinity in Real TimeHeidi Schlipphacke, University of Illinois at Chicago, USASebald's Encounters with French NarrativeJudith R. Ryan, Harvard University, USAIV: AutobiographyGender, Psychoanalysis, and Childhood Autobiography: Christa Wolf's KindheitsmusterLorna Martens, University of Virginia, USAProvisional ExistenceWalter H. Sokel, USA