Literaturvermittlung um 1900: Fallstudien zu Wegen in das deutschsprachige kulturelle System by Florian Krobb (review)

Abstract

1054 Reviews The title is intended to provide the broadest possible roofunder which the nineteen papers (presented at two different Fontane conferences in London in 1999) would fit.And still: about a third of the papers do not really address either the specifically Prussian or the peculiarly European dimension of Fontane's work. This is not to the volume's disadvantage, since some of the contributions that do not explicitly address the topics indicated in the volume's title are among the most insightful and infor? mative, most notably Peter James Bowman's reading of Schach von Wuthenow and Godela Weiss-Sussex's comparison of Fontane's narrative townscapes with those of visual artists of his time. On the whole, the volume is interesting, stimulating, and useful. It would have been even more useful if a proper introduction had situated the new departures noticeable in some of the contributions, and in the scope and remit of the volume as a whole, in the context of Fontane scholarship of, say, the last twenty years or so. Unfortunately, the introduction consists of two and a half pages of name-dropping. What I also miss is some mention of Fontane's own keen awareness of how international the world he inhabited had become in the second half of the nineteenth century, and how this realization manifested itself in his literary writings. In this respect, the Chinese motif in EffiBriest is but the tip of an iceberg. National University of Ireland, Maynooth Florian Krobb Literaturvermittlung um igoo: Fallstudien zu Wegen in das deutschsprachigekulturelle System. Ed. by Sabine Strumper-Krobb and Florian Krobb. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 54) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2001. 181 pp. ?37; $34. ISBN 90-4201356 -7 (pbk). In their informative and wide-ranging introduction to this volume, the editors note that the concept of 'Literaturvermittlung' refersto, and intends to illuminate, a multifaceted and international area of research. It is a strength of Literaturvermittlungum igoo that it includes a variety of critical approaches to the phenomenon of liter? ary transmission from one language and/or national culture to another. That this transmission is a complex one is well demonstrated. 'Literaturvermittlung' includes aspects of translation, imitation, influence, reception, and (unavoidably) intertextu? ality. How, ask Florian Krobb and Sabine Strumper-Krobb, is knowledge about the literature in a given language transmitted to a differentcultural system? Who decides which texts are to be translated, who commissions the translations, who publishes and distributes them? These questions are among those discussed in the nine essays that, in sensible combination and with a clear progression of argument, constitute this book. The main issues under consideration are significant in their own right; and they also induce several contributors to reflecton related ones. For example, how is 'Liter? aturvermittlung' associated with other forms of cultural influence?in the finearts, in philosophy, or in the natural sciences? Obviously, one cannot expect a single volume fully to explore all of these and accompanying questions. Yet although the present volume focuses on the period just before and after 1900, and although its primary concern is with German and Austrian literature, it also presents a number of observations that are of theoretical interest, and that interestingly apply to other national literatures as well. Literary transmission was, of course, nothing new in Germany around 1900. By then there was already a long tradition of impulses from abroad? as early as in the mid-eighteenth century, Lessing characterized the Germans as 'die geschworenen Nachahmer alles Auslandischen' (HamburgischeDramaturgie, in Werke in acht Bdnden, ed. by Herbert G Gopfert (Munich: Hanser, 1970-79), iv (1973), p. 698). Yet several ofthe essays suggest that in the period from 1870-71 to 1914-18 MLR, 98.4, 2003 1055 literature written in German received stronger, and more far-reaching, impulses from abroad than in any earlier period of German literary history. The book's breadth and critical thrust are well illustrated in some of the major contributions to the volume. In 'Marchen aus Irlands Gauen' Joachim Fischer high? lights the political aspects pertaining to cultural transmission and influence. In the case of German conceptions of Ireland and the Irish, one such aspect is that of...