Monatshefte最新文献

{"title":"Handbuch Homiletische Rhetorik.<i>Herausgegeben von Michael Meyer-Blanck. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. viii + 748 Seiten. €236.99 gebunden oder eBook.</i>","authors":"Björn Hambsch","doi":"10.3368/m.115.3.472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.3.472","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"131 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135267169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ambivalent Literary Farewells to the German Democratic Republic: What is Lost.<i>By John David Pizer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. 207 pages. $114.99 hardcover or eBook.</i>","authors":"Stephen Brockmann","doi":"10.3368/m.115.3.499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.3.499","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"133 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135312832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Disability in German-Speaking Europe: History, Memory, Culture. Edited by Linda Leskau, Tanja Nusser, and Katherine Sorrels. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2022. 249 pages + 4 images. $99.00 hardcover, $29.95 e-book.","authors":"Carol Poore","doi":"10.3368/m.115.1.110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.1.110","url":null,"abstract":"ising question whether dreams are gendered in Middle High German narrative literature. While she never truly answers this question, Tuczay’s study reveals the different characteristics and functions of dreams in this literary tradition: prophetic and false, warning and healing, allegorical and biblical, and political. Three essays deserve special attention for their emphasis upon the didactic function of imagination. Robert Landau Ames’s and Edward Currie’s essays situate the discourse of two very different texts within the Mirror for Princes tradition. Ames investigates the depiction of the monstrous King Zahhāk in the Arabic Shāhnāmah (Book of Kings) by Firdawsı̄, showing how the Persian audience was to learn about good kingship through the vile and monstrous behavior of a bad king. Through a detailed discussion of council in the digressions found in the text, Currie makes the strong case that the medieval audience was to learn from the pitfalls of monstrous council at the court in Beowulf. Jane Beal sheds light on the didactic function of imagining animals and mythical beings in the medieval bestiary, with special focus on the Aberdeen Bestiary. A memory study of the best kind, Beal’s text reveals that the descriptions and depictions of these animals represented a type of memory work for the medieval audience, a means of contemplating the life of Christ. Much in this volume will be useful to scholars interested in imagination. They will find the most current evaluation of key issues informing the debate around imagination, including the meaning of dreams and travel literature, memory, questions of genre, issues of space, the Other, and reception. The great diversity and the connections among literary traditions and topics found in this collection show the universality of imagination. The book also uncovers varying modes of premodern understanding, interpretation, and reception of medieval and early modern imagination, bringing to light many interpretive issues regarding imagination that warrant further study. For these reasons, this book should figure in any scholar’s or advanced graduate student’s research of the premodern imagination.","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"115 1","pages":"110 - 112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Freiheit und Fremdheit. Kafkas Romane. Von Dirk Oschmann. Basel: Schwabe, 2021. 258 Seiten. CHF52.00 gebunden, CHF48.00 eBook.","authors":"Marcus P. Bullock","doi":"10.3368/m.115.1.120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.1.120","url":null,"abstract":"Umbruchsthesen zu erhärten und auszudifferenzieren, hätten die je ,,überkommenen Strukturen“ (9), die insgesamt etwas unterbestimmt bleiben, stärker berücksichtigt werden können, um konkrete Verschiebungen zu markieren, aber auch Kontinuitäten im Auge zu behalten. Schließen nicht beispielsweise die ironischen Leser_innenInvolvierungen, die Begründungsstrategien ästhetischer Autonomie im Wechselspiel mit empirischen und fiktiven Adressat_innen, aber auch die forcierten Grenzauflösungen zwischen Kunstwerk und Publikum, wie sie die Beiträge herausarbeiten, immer wieder auch an Verfahren etwa der Romantik an – so dass sich der vom Band unterstrichene modernistische Umsturzgestus auch verkomplizieren und auf seine Genealogien hin befragen ließe? Positiv zu betonen ist hingegen, dass der Band – neben einigen in der Forschung bereits gut etablierten Thesen und Beobachtungen – auch eine Reihe bislang wenig beachteter Autor_innen und Texte in den Blick rückt und anregende Perspektiven auf ihre Adressierungsstrategien eröffnet. Die ins Zentrum gestellte Frage nach dem notorisch schwer zu greifenden Verhältnis von Künstler_innen, Kunstwerken und Öffentlichkeit und seinen historischen Umbrüchen um 1900 verdient in jedem Fall weitere Vertiefung. Dabei könnte es gewinnbringend sein, die vom Band vorgeschlagene narratologische Perspektive mit den hier ausgeklammerten literatursoziologischenund rezeptionsästhetischen Ansätzen (8) in engeren Dialog zu bringen: etwa mit jüngeren, Wechselverhältnisse von Text, materiellem Lektüreobjekt und Rezeption modellierenden Konzepten der Affordanz (Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, Princeton/Oxford 2015) oder der Leseszene (Irina Hron u.a., Hrsg., Leseszenen. Poetologie – Geschichte – Medialität, Heidelberg 2020), die sich mit dem Begriff der Adressatenfunktion als kompatibel erweisen und dazu beitragen könnten, der komplexen Interaktion moderner Literatur mit ihrem Publikum in ihrer Vieldimensionalität weiter auf die Spur zu kommen.","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"115 1","pages":"120 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Weimar in Princeton: Thomas Mann and the Kahler Circle. By Stanley Corngold. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. xiii + 192 Seiten. $81.00 hardcover, $24.25 paperback, $19.40 e-book.","authors":"Stefan Keppler-Tasaki","doi":"10.3368/m.115.1.128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.1.128","url":null,"abstract":"postwar editions of his works emphasized the transatlantic connection further. Mann’s postwar status was shaped by forces outside of Germany. Soon, however, political developments required once again that Mann reconceive his role in the global literary community. The Cold War politicized world literature, reshaping it from a commons of many cultures to a binary construct juxtaposing two worldviews and value systems—East and West, Communism and capitalism—and writers were expected to stand with one or the other. In the U.S., “official circles turned away from” (249) Mann when he would not unequivocally denounce Communism but promoted peace with the Soviet Union. Accusations of being a Communist sympathizer did not hurt his position as a cultural leader, yet ultimately prompted him to leave the U.S. for Switzerland in 1952. Back in Europe, he used his final years to promote again the image of the writer as independent of political and social developments and as a champion of humanity—as he had done in the 1930s. The five interludes of Thomas Mann’s War are dedicated to works published between 1938 and 1948, which Boes links to Mann’s shifting self-image in a world where cultural and literary communities were in flux. Boes argues, for instance, that with Lotte in Weimar Mann proposed that the role of the representative writer does not rely on personal experience, but is a construct of literary criticism and other cultural forces over time. Just how correct this assessment was has become clear in the wake of the publication of Mann’s diaries starting in 1975: revealing his sexual interest in men, it shifted the focus from Mann’s public to his private life and changed the reception of his works, biography, and public engagement. Thomas Mann’s War is a fascinating read and an important contribution to Mann scholarship. Moreover, it furthers our understandings of the dynamics effecting shifts in twentieth-century cultural, political, and media landscapes, of the manner in which the perception of writers is shaped, and of their role in creating and defending an autonomous artistic and literary sphere. The subject of the émigré writer during times of war and authoritarian governments is most topical today. Boes’s excellent study is highly interdisciplinary, and its jargon-free language makes it accessible to a broad audience. Some prior familiarity with Mann’s biography is helpful to fully appreciate the intricacies of the dynamics Boes describes. The book will appeal to academics and non-academics interested in history, politics, culture, and media, and scholars will welcome the extensive bibliography and index.","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"20 1","pages":"128 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fighter, Worker, and Family Man: German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933–1941. By Sebastian Huebel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. 264 pages +[ql 29 b/w images. $35.95 paperback or eBook.","authors":"Javier Samper Vendrell","doi":"10.3368/m.115.2.309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.2.309","url":null,"abstract":"die Perspektive des Kindes wechselt und erst am Ende der Handlung wieder zur elterlichen Sichtweise zurückkehrt, aus der das vom Kind Erlebte im Schnelldurchlauf aus ,objektiver‘ Warte nochmals gezeigt wird. Kracauer zufolge sollte diese Schlusswendung auf das Publikum ,,wie die Auflösung der Bilderrätsel des Haupt-Teiles wirken“ (zit. 321). So dankbar man für den Hinweis auf Kracauers praktische Filmarbeit ist, die erst in jüngster Zeit von Nia Perivolaropoulou (L’atelier cinématographique de Siegfried Kracauer, 2018) näher erforscht worden ist, und so erhellend Rühses Hinweise zu den Entstehungsumständen und letztlich fehlschlagenden Umsetzungsbemühungen sind: Ihr weit ausholender Deutungsansatz, der die kurze Skizze als Gegenentwurf zur NS-Jugendideologie eines Films wie Hitlerjunge Quex (1933) und als rationalismuskritisches Vorspiel zu Horkheimers und Adornos Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947) zu profilieren sucht, erscheint doch etwas überzogen. Weitaus präziser und daher auch plausibler argumentiert die Autorin dann wieder im abschließenden Kapitel, das der Genese und dem weiteren Schicksal der im ,,Marseiller Entwurf“ (1940/41) zur Theorie des Films noch so prominent platzierten TotentanzMetapher nachgeht. Anhand der Kracauer bekannten Bearbeitungen von Sergej Eisensteins in Mexiko gefilmtem Diá de Muertos-Material kann Rühse schlüssig begründen, weshalb Kracauer den Bezug zu einer dieser Fassungen fremder Hand – Lesser Sols Death Day (1934) – zunächst ins Konzept der Theorie des Films aufgenommen, letztlich jedoch auf ihn verzichtet hat. Aus Kracauers filmtheoretischem opus magnum verschwunden ist damit auch die schrecklich schöne Sentenz: ,,Das Gesicht gilt dem Film nichts, wenn nicht der Totenkopf dahinter einbezogen ist: ,Danse macabre‘. Zu welchem Ende? Das wird man sehen.“ (Zit. 223) Jede der fünf Fallstudien des Buches endet mit einem schlaglichtartigen Ausblick auf die Medienkultur der Gegenwart. In diesen kurzen Schlussstücken soll die Aktualität der Positionen Kracauers überprüft werden. Dies geschieht allerdings – in etwa nach dem Motto ,,Wenn Kracauer heute noch leben würde [ . . . ]“ (60) – auf so oberflächliche Art, dass sie fast schon drohen, den Ertrag der zuvor geleisteten philologischen und kulturhistorischen Rekonstruktionen wieder zu verspielen. Der Lektüreeindruck wird auch dadurch getrübt, dass das Buch über weite Strecken sprachlich ungelenk wirkt und mitunter Stilblüten produziert, die in unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft zu Zitaten eines so ausgefeilten Stilisten wie Kracauer umso greller ins Auge stechen.","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"20 1","pages":"309 - 311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Schnittpunkte. Literarisches Leben des deutschsprachigen Ungarn um 1800. Band 1. Von László Tarnói. Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2020. 302 Seiten + 30 s/w Abbildungen. €25,00 broschiert.","authors":"István Gombocz","doi":"10.3368/m.115.2.274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.2.274","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"115 1","pages":"274 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kafka’s Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human-Animal Barrier. By Naama Harel. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020. 216 pages + 1 image. $59.95 hardcover, open access eBook.","authors":"H. Braunbeck","doi":"10.3368/m.115.2.300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.2.300","url":null,"abstract":"is to demonstrate the constructed nature of scientific narratives, including Koch’s Ätiologie der Tuberkulose [1884]. With her focus on origin stories and the beginnings of the detective story in the nineteenth century, Seidel’s prose is stylistically in keeping with the sweeping narratives of the period under consideration. Her writing is engaging, and the author excels at providing detailed analyses of countless intersections between literature and science that are consistently well researched and argued. Nevertheless, the work would have benefited from more embedded synthesis and signposting, where the larger implications of Seidel’s findings for the detective-story genre or individual scientific disciplines emerged more prominently. On more than one occasion, this reviewer stumbled over what seemed to be abrupt shifts in focus, when the author—without providing an explicit synthesis of preceding material or a rationale for subsequent content—moved to an excursus, a new text, or a new section. To be sure, each subsection of the case studies indicates a theme (with respect to evolutionary biology, “Missing Links”), yet the ultimate organizing principle in this section is a close reading of individual works to highlight the existence of common discourses across science and literature. In her conclusion, Seidel touches on the rationale for the selection of works included in her study (439); a brief treatment of these criteria would have been a welcome addition to the disciplinary subsections, as would a consideration of the patterns or development that the works present within a given subsection. Alternately, a more explicitly thematic organization in the third section might have facilitated subsequent reference to Seidel’s analyses. These points do not significantly impinge on the manifold contributions to intellectual and cultural history of the long nineteenth century of Seidel’s study. Her close readings of detective stories, among them Perutz’s and Huch’s texts, are in and of themselves meaningful contributions to the discipline. Yet more significantly, the author successfully weaves crime and detective fiction into the intellectual fabric of the nineteenth century, offers an innovative and productive definition of the subgenre of the detective story, and illuminates the constructed nature of scientific writings. As such, Dem Anfang auf der Spur promises to be of interest to scholars in interdisciplinary fields, including comparative literature, narrative theory, and literature and science studies.","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"115 1","pages":"300 - 303"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From the Editors","authors":"Hannah V. Eldridge, Sabine Gross, Sonja E. Klocke, Melissa Sheedy","doi":"10.3368/m.115.3.vii","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.3.vii","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"159 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135311319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Film und Kino als Spiegel. Siegfried Kracauers Filmschriften aus Deutschland und Frankreich. Von Viola Rühse. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. 320 Seiten + 70 s/w + 17 farbige Abbildungen. €69,95/$80.99 gebunden oder eBook.","authors":"M. Wedel","doi":"10.3368/m.115.2.307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/m.115.2.307","url":null,"abstract":"raising of issues around working-class disability and the perceptual delusions brought on by alcoholic intoxication. The last chapter addresses the political ambivalence that is inherent to the discourse of hygiene by considering how it is deployed on the Left. Biopower and eugenics have typically been associated with the political Right; however, Dobryden works through the contradictions that arise when a politics that critiques the ideology of capitalist productivity simultaneously, perhaps unwittingly, reifies notions of collective health and hygiene. Films like Zeitprobleme: Wie der Arbeiter wohnt (1930) and the canonical Kuhle Wampe (1930), while depicting the ravages of capitalist modernity on the body and mind, reinscribe the hygienic call for the well-being of a collective in the name of revolutionary material environments. This chapter traces the genealogy of this political ambivalence to writings by urban planners and social hygienists, but also the filmmakers themselves, drawing out the need for historians to nuance our understanding of left-wing politics in the late Weimar period. Like other erudite studies of media archaeology that operate against the backdrop of a sophisticated theoretical apparatus, Dobryden’s monograph is a pleasurable, enlightening, and in many ways inspiring read. In its display of rigorous archival research, interesting choice of film texts, and exploration of new interpretative possibilities, the reader will see there is still much to be learned from Weimar cinema. This is true of the ostensibly familiar theme of hygiene and its politicization within the context of German modernity. The Hygienic Apparatus thus is highly recommended for scholars and graduate students, but its readability also allows undergraduate students at all levels to engage productively with its important ideas.","PeriodicalId":54028,"journal":{"name":"Monatshefte","volume":"115 1","pages":"307 - 309"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69653528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}