Virginia L Lewis - Böcker

Becoming Fiction: Reassessing Atheism in Dürrenmatt’s Stoffe sets forth a clarification of the importance of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, modern Swiss dramatist, essayist, novelist and self-proclaimed atheist (1921–1990), and offers new insights into the ways in which his father’s vocation as a Protestant minister, along with Dürrenmatt’s own decision as a young man to pursue a career in writing rather than religion, shaped his world view and, in particular, made necessary a final, desperate attempt to fictionally recast his own life through revisions and amplifications of many of his earlier works when he created his final prose volume, Stoffe. Dürrenmatt devoted immense energy in his writings to wrestling with his father’s God as a way of seeking self-identity. That perceived loss of his father’s esteem became the motor behind his works. After earlier successes, the icy reception of his most ambitious play, Der Mitmacher, in 1976, left the author in such a frustrated state of disappointment that he reached a point of linguistic breakdown. This book contends that Dürrenmatt’s loss of voice forced the author to a new kind of writing: a ‘re-turn’ home. Becoming Fiction explores the damage caused by Dürrenmatt’s inability to express his most central beliefs through the outdated, deceptive modes of linguistic thought and tradition. Consequently, the book argues, at the point of that breakdown of rigid linguistic and theological concepts, a space was forced open, and the Stoffe reveal a Divine presence.

The study of literature has expanded to include an evolutionary perspective. Its premise is that the literary text and literature as an overarching institution came into existence as a product of the same evolutionary process that gave rise to the human species. In this view, literature is an evolutionary adaptation that functions as any other adaptation does, as a means of enhancing survivability and also promoting benefits for the individual and society. Text in the Natural World is an introduction to the theory and a survey of topics pertinent to the evolutionary view of literature. After a polemical, prefatory chapter and an overview of the pertinent aspects of evolutionary theory itself, the book examines integral building blocks of literature and literary expression as effects of evolutionary development. This includes chapters on moral sense, symbolic thought, literary aesthetics in general, literary ontology, the broad topic of form, function and device in literature, a last theoretical chapter on narrative, and a chapter on literary themes. The concluding chapter builds on the preceding one as an illustration of evolutionary thematic study in practice, in a study of the fauna in the fiction of Maupassant. This text is designed to be of interest to those who read and think about things literary, as well as to those who have interest in the extension of Darwin’s great idea across the horizon of human culture. It tries to bridge the gulf that has separated the humanities from the sciences, and would be a helpful text for courses taught in both literary theory and interdisciplinary approaches to literature and philosophy.

This book is an introductory examination of the Hermetic tradition in the Renaissance and how James Joyce made use of certain of its salient features in his four works of fiction: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. This book makes a useful contribution to literary studies of Joyce’s work as well as introductory cultural studies of the Hermetic tradition, its philosophy and important figures, like Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno.

When reading Ludwig Tieck’s texts, the reader becomes aware that dreams, the unconscious, and art play a key role. This study posits that Ekphrasis and dream interpretation are similar due to both analyzing a visual image and attempting to translate the visual into the verbal in order to gain a better and more complete understanding of it. This book discusses Tieck’s texts—Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, "Die Gemälde," "Die Freunde," "Die Elfen," "Der Runenberg," "Liebeszauber," and "Das alte Buch und die Reise ins Blaue hinein"—and how Ekphrasis and dream interpretations are essential for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the visual and dream image, resulting in new readings and insights. Furthermore, this book demonstrates that Tieck made major contributions to Ekphrasis studies by integrating notional, dynamic, and static prose Ekphrasis into his fictional works and thus should play a more important role in the current Ekphrasis debate.

The Novels of Zsigmond Móricz in the Context of European Realism is the first English-language monograph on one of Hungary’s—and Central Europe’s—most important modern authors. Using a thematic approach that privileges literary characters as stand-ins for real human beings, Virginia L. Lewis investigates Móricz’s thematization of individual agency in seven realist novels that form the foundation of the author’s reputation as a major twentieth-century novelist. Lewis does an outstanding job of showcasing the research results of the many Hungarian scholars who have studied Móricz’s narrative output over the past century, while also bringing decidedly new perspectives to the table in introducing the author to an English-speaking audience. Utilizing the theoretical impulses of scholars such as Horst and Ingrid Daemmrich, Margaret Archer, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ibrahim Taha, among others, Lewis forges a new and productive path in Móricz scholarship, while also making his oeuvre accessible to a global audience. Any reader with an interest in Hungarian and Central European narrative will find this study enormously useful for the revelations it brings regarding Móricz’s poignant and brilliant critique of the corrosive influence of commodification and greed on human agency in modern society. "Informed by theory and grounded in a critical understanding of Hungarian social history in the first half of the twentieth century, Lewis’s engaging study of the realist novels of Zsigmond Móricz compels readers to think in new ways about questions of human agency amongst Hungary’s lower and middle classes as this played out against the backdrop of capitalist transformation and pronounced social conflicts and injustices in the decades leading up to World War II. Skillfully structured around succinct analyses of seven of Móricz’s key texts, Lewis’s book addresses a sizable gap in the English-language scholarship on one of Hungary’s greatest writers, and will be a welcome addition to the libraries of literary scholars and social and intellectual historians alike." —Steven Jobbitt, Associate Professor of Central and Eastern European History, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada

This autobiographical narrative provides a unique personal account of the life of a Volga German under the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent famine, agricultural collectivization, and Stalinist regime with its persecution of minorities including ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. The fact that its author, master miller Heinrich Neuwirt (1902-1953), survived as long as he did is a testimony to the resourcefulness, determination to survive, and capacity to endure hardship he evinced as he was repeatedly ensnared in Stalin’s net, imprisoned, enslaved, and finally sent to the Russian front in a penal army. Neuwirt only managed to produce his account as a result of finding refuge in West Germany after the war, and although the manuscript made it to Volga German relatives in the United States, nothing came of publication efforts since it was written in German. The value of this manuscript lies in its first-person documentation of Volga German life under Stalin. German professor and literary scholar Virginia L. Lewis has rendered Neuwirt’s original German account into faithful English translation.

The study of self-realization as a primary literary theme covers a wide range of literature. The journey to self-discovery can be represented in many different forms, from novels of development to social criticism and to historical plays. It can provide the core of a basic literary form, such as a fairytale and the decision on crossroads of life. The self as a primary literary element can be identified as an axis of symmetry, similar to a central section of a wheel, which connects to all related themes. The description of space, setting, time, historical moment, and heritage shape all documentation of self-orientation. Thematic developments highlight specific appropriate locations for the unfolding story. By comparing works from different periods and examining manifestations of the theme in American, French, English, and German literature, this study traces the theme of self-realization in the coming-of-age constellation, the acceptance and the criticism of existing social conditions, the attempts to comprehend the past and the current historical conditions, and in utopian visions of the future.While literature has provided singular and unforgettable portraits of figures in works ranging from Bellow, Dickens, Fontane, Goethe, Moliere, Schiller, Grass, and Raabe to Tolstoy or Trollope, it is equally apparent that primary forms of self-realization show a high correlation of recurring patterns. Some features associated with primary thematic emphasis and resolution occur with high frequency. Figures can be conceived of as being capable of intellectual and spiritual growth. Alternately, in a moment of insight, they may persevere in their errors in judgment, the frailty of institutions, or a web of circumstances that impeded their optimal development. In such instances, the action is usually designed to convey a vision of human potential to the reader—and furthermore, raise serious questions about the apparent predetermination of existence.