Dänisch-deutsche Doppelgänger: Transnationale und bikulturelle Literatur zwischen Barock und Moderne ed. by Heinrich Detering et al

Abstract

MLRy 98,2,2003 531 farthe most space, are perhaps the most useful forteaching purposes. Each comes with a list of further reading, generally thoughtfully compiled, though one could venture to say here that English-language sources could more often have been given priority. Compilers of the entries have evidently been allowed to write in their own style and follow their own individual approach, a policy which sometimes results in obscurity, but which means, arguably, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One can of course argue with the choice of authors and individual literary works. For Thomas Mann, we get The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, Doctor Faustus, and Tonio Kroger, but strangely no Buddenbrooks; Hans Magnus Enzensberger has apparently never written a classic, but Peter Handke and Elfriede Jelinek both have two each. There are unfortunate omissions too. From the 1960s and 1970s no Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and no Bernward Vesper, no 'Terrorism' or '1968' either (and no Ulrike Meinhof). Yet the selection is politically motivated for all that. There is an emphasis on women. Thus Caroline and Dorothea Schlegel come in between the more famous brothers and Marianne Ehrmann's Amalie is given its due as 'the first theater fiction written by a woman'. The choices in this respect appear judicious and one certainly cannot say that the men have been squeezed out to make room. It is when we come to German writing by authors of non-German origin, an expanding area of scholarly enquiry for the last decade or more, that editorial decisions become more contentious and ideologically driven. Only time will tell whether these will date more quickly than the rest, but taken as a whole the Encyclopedia is surely destined to become an indispensable research and reference tool. University of Kent Julian Preece Ddnisch-deutsche Doppelgdnger: Transnationale und bikulturelle Literatur zwischen Barock und Moderne. Ed. by Heinrich Detering, Anne-Bitt Gerecke, and Johan de Mylius. (Grenzgange: Studien zur skandinavisch-deutschen Literaturgeschichte , 3) Gottingen: Wallstein. 2001. 240 pp. ?20. ISBN 3-89244356 -4 (pbk). Traditionally, the concepts of nation and national culture have provided the basis for criticism of modern literature as a medium for the negotiation of collective iden? tity.In recent years, the emphasis has increasingly shifted towards the phenomena of transculturality, hybridity,and the 'space between' cultures, literatures, and identities. In the process particular attention has been given to authors who, because of their biography, are already located between differentlanguages and cultures, participating in and mediating between both. The book under discussion deals with a variety of such authors forwhom the bicultural and bilingual status is central to their position as 'Grenzganger'. Most of them lived and wrote on both sides of linguistic, geographical, and political borders and often quite consciously regarded themselves as mediators between them. The bor? ders in question are those between Denmark and Germany, and between Danish and German languages and cultures. Throughout the centuries the political borders and cultural-linguistic demarcation lines underwent frequent and considerable changes, and the political and the cultural dimensions did not always coincide. The regional and historical diversity of the figures treated in this collection of essays reflects this fact. The time-span covered in this book is considerable: it starts with an article on the Baroque poet Zacharias Lund (1608-7l) and concludes with a number of authors who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century, such as Herman Bang (1857-1912) and Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-85). In their foreword the editors point out that the contributions to the volume look at different models of transnational transfer and 532 Reviews mediation which grew out of a political and cultural development increasingly characterized by concepts of nation and nationhood. The confrontation of the idea of a national literature characterized by specific traits and animosities with a more cosmopolitan , transnational, and transcultural outlook dominates the work of many of the authors under discussion, and it also influences the place they are assigned in literary history at any given time. Of the twelve contributions to the volume, which is based on a symposium held in Kiel in 1998, eleven deal with individual authors, while the last article...