Todd Kontje – författare

Private Lives in the Public Sphere examines the Bildungsroman in the context of the rapid changes that affected the German literary revolution that made up for its belatedness in its rapidity and scope. The nature and quantity of reading material produced, the social status of the writer, and the reading habits of the public changed dramatically within a few decades. At the beginning of the century the new texts that appeared at the annual book fairs were primarily written in Latin and devoted to theology. By the end of the century the number of new publications each year has increased almost exponentially, with the novel leading the way. This new institution of literature constituted an important part of what Jürgen Habermas has termed the "public sphere," a forum for public debate in which members of the middle class, although still limited in their direct access to political power, could at least begin to articulate their problems and formulate their hopes. The Bildungsroman emerged during this period.This study focuses on moments of literary self-consciousness in the Bildungsroman as reflections on the rapid transformation of the German literary institution. The novels are viewed as examples of what Patricia Waugh has called "metafiction," that is, "fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality." By concentrating on the interaction between literary form and institutional context in these novels, it becomes possible to mediate between the extremes of those who would view literature as a mere reflection of historical conditions and those who would maintain the purity of the aesthetic object. Literature in this view neither re-creates reality nor does it escape reality; instead, it transforms reality, and the Bildungsroman is the genre that examines this transformation.

Georg Forster (1754–1794) was famous during his lifetime, notorious after his death, and largely forgotten by the later nineteenth century. Remembered today as the young man who sailed around the world with Captain Cook and as one of the leading figures in the revolutionary Republic of Mainz, Forster was also a prolific writer and translator who left behind two travelogues, a series of essays on diverse topics, and numerous letters. This in-depth look at Forster’s work and life reveals his importance for other writers of the age. Todd Kontje traces the major intellectual themes and challenges found in Forster’s writings, interweaving close textual analysis with his rich but short life. Each chapter engages with themes that reflect the current debates in eighteenth-century literary and cultural studies, including changing notions of authorship, multilingualism, the representation of so-called primitive societies, Enlightenment ideas about race, and early forms of ecological thinking. As Kontje shows, Forster’s peripatetic life, malleable sense of national identity, and fluency in multiple languages contrast with the image of the solitary genius in the “age of Goethe.” In this way, Forster provides a different model of authorship and citizenship better understood in the context of an increasingly globalized world.Compellingly argued and engagingly written, this book restores Forster to his rightful place within the German literary tradition, and in so doing, it urges us to reconsider the age of Goethe as multilingual and malleable, local and cosmopolitan, dynamic and decentered. It will be welcomed by specialists in German studies and the Enlightenment.

Georg Forster (1754–1794) was famous during his lifetime, notorious after his death, and largely forgotten by the later nineteenth century. Remembered today as the young man who sailed around the world with Captain Cook and as one of the leading figures in the revolutionary Republic of Mainz, Forster was also a prolific writer and translator who left behind two travelogues, a series of essays on diverse topics, and numerous letters. This in-depth look at Forster’s work and life reveals his importance for other writers of the age. Todd Kontje traces the major intellectual themes and challenges found in Forster’s writings, interweaving close textual analysis with his rich but short life. Each chapter engages with themes that reflect the current debates in eighteenth-century literary and cultural studies, including changing notions of authorship, multilingualism, the representation of so-called primitive societies, Enlightenment ideas about race, and early forms of ecological thinking. As Kontje shows, Forster’s peripatetic life, malleable sense of national identity, and fluency in multiple languages contrast with the image of the solitary genius in the “age of Goethe.” In this way, Forster provides a different model of authorship and citizenship better understood in the context of an increasingly globalized world.Compellingly argued and engagingly written, this book restores Forster to his rightful place within the German literary tradition, and in so doing, it urges us to reconsider the age of Goethe as multilingual and malleable, local and cosmopolitan, dynamic and decentered. It will be welcomed by specialists in German studies and the Enlightenment.

Global Germany Circa 1800 asks two interrelated questions: How did Germans participate in the European conquest of the world, and how were they different from other imperial powers? In other words, what is the relation between the German form of empire, the old Reich, and the modern European empires that emerged in the global age?In this book, Todd Kontje presents a revisionist literary and intellectual history, inviting readers to consider how we might understand “Germany” at the turn of the nineteenth century if we remove the nation-state as the inevitable goal of cultural and political development. Focusing on the pivotal years around 1800, when many of the concepts that define the modern era first came into being, Kontje investigates how thinkers in and around Weimar—from Goethe, Schiller, and Kant to Georg Forster, Heinrich von Kleist, and Alexander von Humboldt—worked within existing political structures to make sense of the region’s place in the world. Ultimately, he reveals how Weimar, a remote artist hub long thought to exemplify the insularity of a soon-to-be-unified nation, was in fact utterly worldly, and in a manner very different from the political capitals of imperial nation-states like London and Paris.Accessible and entertaining, this literary history is essential reading for German studies students and scholars, and it will appeal to audiences in world history, empire studies, intellectual history, and comparative literature.

Imperial Fictions explores ways in which writers from late antiquity to the present have imagined communities before and beyond the nation-state. It takes as its point of departure challenges to the discrete nation-state posed by globalization, migration, and European integration today, but then circles back to the beginnings of European history after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike nationalist literary historians of the nineteenth century, who sought the tribal roots of an allegedly homogeneous people, this study finds a distant mirror of analogous processes today in the fluid mixtures and movements of peoples. Imperial Fictions argues that it is time to stop thinking about today’s multicultural present as a deviation from a culturally monolithic past. We should rather consider the various permutations of “German” identities that have been negotiated within local and imperial contexts from the early Middle Ages to the present.

Imperial Fictions explores ways in which writers from late antiquity to the present have imagined communities before and beyond the nation-state. It takes as its point of departure challenges to the discrete nation-state posed by globalization, migration, and European integration today, but then circles back to the beginnings of European history after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike nationalist literary historians of the nineteenth century, who sought the tribal roots of an allegedly homogeneous people, this study finds a distant mirror of analogous processes today in the fluid mixtures and movements of peoples. Imperial Fictions argues that it is time to stop thinking about today’s multicultural present as a deviation from a culturally monolithic past. We should rather consider the various permutations of “German” identities that have been negotiated within local and imperial contexts from the early Middle Ages to the present.

In this 1998 book, Todd Kontje surveys novels by German women over the one-hundred-year period that stretches from the beginnings of a German national literature to the founding of its nation-state. Introducing readers to the lives and works of fourteen women writers of the period, he shows the historical and thematic coherence of a body of fiction by women that has been obscured by traditional literary histories. He explores ways in which novels about traditionally feminine domestic concerns also comment on patriarchal politics in the German fatherland. Finally, he argues that we must view the history of the German novel in the context of both the history of sexuality and the rise of German nationalism, and that novels by German women, often marginalized or trivialized, played a central role in shaping attitudes toward class, gender and the nation.

In this 1998 book, Todd Kontje surveys novels by German women over the one-hundred-year period that stretches from the beginnings of a German national literature to the founding of its nation-state. Introducing readers to the lives and works of fourteen women writers of the period, he shows the historical and thematic coherence of a body of fiction by women that has been obscured by traditional literary histories. He explores ways in which novels about traditionally feminine domestic concerns also comment on patriarchal politics in the German fatherland. Finally, he argues that we must view the history of the German novel in the context of both the history of sexuality and the rise of German nationalism, and that novels by German women, often marginalized or trivialized, played a central role in shaping attitudes toward class, gender and the nation.

Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) is not only one of the leading German novelists of the twentieth century, but also one of the few to transcend national and language boundaries to achieve major stature in the English-speaking world. Famous from the time that he published his first novel in 1901, Mann became an iconic figure, seen as the living embodiment of German national culture. Leading scholar Todd Kontje provides a succinct introduction to Mann's life and work, discussing key moments in Mann's personal life and his career as a public intellectual, and giving readers a sense of why he is considered such an important - and controversial - writer. At the heart of the book is an informed appreciation of Mann's great literary achievements, including the novel The Magic Mountain and the haunting short story Death in Venice.

Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) is not only one of the leading German novelists of the twentieth century, but also one of the few to transcend national and language boundaries to achieve major stature in the English-speaking world. Famous from the time that he published his first novel in 1901, Mann became an iconic figure, seen as the living embodiment of German national culture. Leading scholar Todd Kontje provides a succinct introduction to Mann's life and work, discussing key moments in Mann's personal life and his career as a public intellectual, and giving readers a sense of why he is considered such an important - and controversial - writer. At the heart of the book is an informed appreciation of Mann's great literary achievements, including the novel The Magic Mountain and the haunting short story Death in Venice.

New, specially commissioned essays on representative works of 19th-century German realism.This volume of new essays by leading scholars treats a representative sampling of German realist prose from the period 1848 to 1900, the period of its dominance of the German literary landscape. It includes essays on familiar, canonical authors -- Stifter, Freytag, Raabe, Fontane, Thomas Mann -- and canonical texts, but also considers writers frequently omitted from traditional literary histories, such as Luise Mühlbach, Friedrich Spielhagen, Louise von François, Karl May, and Eugenie Marlitt. The introduction situates German realism in the context of both German literary history and of developments in other European literatures, and surveys the most prominent critical studies of ninteenth-century realism. The essays treat the following topics: Stifter's Brigitta and the lesson of realism; Mühlbach, Ranke, and the truth of historical fiction; regional histories as national history in Freytag's DieAhnen; gender and nation in Louise von François's historical fiction; theory, reputation, and the career of Friedrich Spielhagen; Wilhelm Raabe and the German colonial experience; the poetics of work in Freytag, Stifter, andRaabe; Jewish identity in Berthold Auerbach's novels; Eugenie Marlitt's narratives of virtuous desire; the appeal of Karl May in the Wilhelmine Empire; Thomas Mann's portrayal of male-male desire in his early short fiction; and Fontane's Effi Briest and the end of realism.Contributors: Robert C. Holub, Brent O. Petersen, Lynne Tatlock, Thomas C. Fox, Jeffrey L. Sammons, John Pizer, Hans J. Rindisbacher, Irene S. Di Maio, Kirsten Belgum,Nina Berman, Robert Tobin, Russell A. Berman.Todd Kontje is Professor of German at the University of California, San Diego.