Critical Time in Modern German Literature and Culture

Dirk Göttsche is Professor of German at the University of Nottingham, Member of the Academia Europaea, and Honorary President of the International Raabe Society. He completed his Dr phil. (1986) and his Habilitation (1999) at the University of Münster. His recent publications include Kleine Prosa in Moderne und Gegenwart (2006) and Remembering Africa: The Rediscovery of Colonialism in Contemporary German Literature (2013).

«Critical Time takes a nuanced view of how modern culture has struggled with time, speed and acceleration. The historical frame and the cross-cultural perspectives make for a thought-provoking survey in this most fascinating arena.» (Professor Karen Leeder, University of Oxford)

• Contents: Dirk Göttsche: Introduction – Gabriele Neher/Jonathan Tallant: The Philosophy of Time and the Implications from Renaissance Art – Jerome Carroll: Acceleration and Retardation: Temporality, Modernist Poetics and Modernity in the Work of Hans Blumenberg and Viktor Shklovsky – Maike Oergel: «The Grand Poem of our Time»: Carlyle, Zeitgeist and his History of the French Revolution – Brian Elliott: Revolution, History and Time in Benjamin and Sloterdijk – Dirk Oschmann: Formbewusstsein als Zeitbewusstsein. Die Anfänge moderner Zeitpoetik im 18. Jahrhundert – Eva Axer: The «inexorable law of perpetual mutation»: Motherwell and Goethe on the Tradition of the Ballad – Ralf Simon: The Temporality of Hospitality – Simon Ward: «Of Time and the City»: Contemporary Visual Culture and the Times of Berlin – Iulia-Karin Patrut: Eigenlogische und historische Zeit in den transmedialen Collagen Herta Müllers. Memoria nach 1989 – Ulrich Bach: On Re-describing History in Christoph Ransmayr’s Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis and Lilian Faschinger’s Stadt der Verlierer – Dirk Göttsche: Zeitpoetik in Kleiner Prosa der Gegenwart – Sabine Zubarik: The Ethics of Time: Stasis and Dilation in Thomas Lehr’s 42 and Svend Age Madsen’s Days with Diam – Sascha Seiler: Das Ende der Zeit. Die Darstellung der Apokalypse in Thomas Glavinics Die Arbeit der Nacht und Cormac McCarthys The Road.