Abstract
Barry Murnane and Andrew Cusack, eds., Populare Erscheinungen: Der deutsche Schauerroman um 1800. Laboratorium Aufklarung 6. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2011.340 pp.The subject matter of this book-the German Schauerroman, or novel, is a welcome treatment of a little-understood yet fascinating aspect of German romantic literature around the year 1800. As with many collections of this type, readers will find some essays more insightful and more aligned to a particular interest than others. On the whole the essays are engaging not only for their discussion of the German Schauerroman but also for connections made to well-known authors of the period, such as Friedrich Schiller, Jean Paul, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. The seventeen essays are arranged into three sections: the Schauerroman as a bridge between the Enlightenment and the modern, manifestations of horror novels, and the Schauerroman and romanticism. While perhaps a convenient grouping for the essays, the three sections may mislead in their implication of cohesion and progressive insight.This book is an outgrowth of a 2009 conference organized by the MartinLuther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg and Trinity College Dublin. Most of the contributors are from universities throughout Germany, with a few from Dublin, the United Kingdom, and Cyprus. All essays are in German. The introduction lays out the key issues with Schauerroman scholarship, proposes that Schauer (horror) rather than serve as the genre designation, and suggests Schauerroman as a possible umbrella term for Ritter-,Rauber-, and Schauerromane (knight novels, robber novels, and horror novels).The four essays in the first section take as their general theme the Schauerroman as a transitional genre between Enlightenment and modernity. Ernst Stockmann offers some potentially useful anthropological background on terror in general, and Mario Grizelj thoughtfully presents the problem of scholarship in the area of German Unterhaltungsliteratur (light fiction) and highlights the importance of this mode of literature.The third section of the book,Schauerroman und Romantik, contains seven essays, some focused on specific authors and others more general. The authorspecific essays are well-written and informative, but interesting more as new perspectives on Hoffmann, Schubert, or Jean Paul rather than on the Schauerroman as a genre. In a more general essay, Hans Brittnacher discusses European and American works that represent the fascination and exoticism of the North and South poles. With its rather surprising and intriguing topic, the essay yields the good insight, among others, that the name gothic novel and its accompanying medieval motifs obscure much of the modernity at the core of some of these works. Almut Nickel's essay offers an interesting, if somewhat superficial, glimpse the subgenre of Nachtstucke (night pieces), outlining what they are, their origin, and their main motifs. One comes away with a good introduction to their common motifs, but not a clear sense of connections to romanticism or to the general topic of the Schauerroman. …
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call