Theodor Fontane and the European Context: Literature, Culture and Society in Prussia and Europe by Patricia Howe , Helen Chambers (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.4, 2003 1053 Western Land- and Kleinstadtjuden (e.g. Mosenthal and Arthur Kahn?the latter,by the way,a real discovery). He uses Oppenheim'spictures as illustrations of ghetto customs when the clothes of his figures,the interiors of their homes, and the scenes of do? mesticity that the painter depicts are in their style and ethos thoroughly middle-class; but the question what makes such pictures part of the same discourse as the literary depictions of utter misery and deprivation in the Ukrainian shtetl is never asked. Ober's book thus contributes to our knowledge of ghetto fiction,but unfortunately not much to our understanding of the genre in its own historical, cultural, and communicative context. Scholars who want to pursue the study of ghetto fiction cannot afford to ignore Ober's survey, since it provides a suitable starting point for future discussions and a wealth of bibliographic and thematic material. However, if one wants to understand ghetto fiction as an attempt at negotiating collective (minority) identities, ifone wants to contextualize ghetto fiction historically, geographically, and in the course of German literary history, Ober does not provide any answers: he does not even pose the questions. National University of Ireland, Maynooth Florian Krobb Theodor Fontane and the European Context: Literature, Culture and Society in Prus? sia and Europe. Ed. by Patricia Howe and Helen Chambers. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 53) Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. 2001. $47; ?50. ISBN 90-420-1236-6 (pbk). The centenary of Fontane's death in 1998 has occasioned a plethora of publications, editions, conference proceedings, exhibitions, and the like. The present volume marks a uniquely British, and at the same time impressively international, contribution to the commemoration of Fontane. International, because contributors from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, France, Italy, Portugal and the United States were given the opportunity to assess Fontane in a context of their choosing, which in many cases meant a comparison of Fontane with the contemporaneous literature of their own nation. In this way, the literature of the Italian risorgimentoas well as that of a Portuguese society in transition towards Biirgerlichkeit come into view. Furthermore , Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Anthony Trollope, Thackeray, and even Beckett are used to draw comparisons and locate Fontane in the context of major currents of European letters. All this provides a welcome counterweight to the references to Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary that have traditionally domi? nated comparative Fontane studies. Some English contributors, particularly the nonGermanists , bring a refreshingly unpretentious approach to Fontane scholarship. However, among non-Germanists, EffiBriest remains the single most important text (doubtless helped by Helen Chambers' and Hugh Rorrison's new translation (Lon? don: Angel Books, 1995)), unfortunately to the detriment of works that deserve equal esteem: Der Stechlin, Die Poggenpuhls, Schach von Wuthenow, Frau Jenny Treibel. It is surely presumptuous to draw such general conclusions, but the volume leaves the impression that the European contexts in which Fontane is mostly viewed are still predominantly literary. It is obvious that the comparative assessment of the societal and cultural conditions which gave rise to differentconcerns and treatments in dif? ferent national literatures still awaits serious investigation. The general consensus seems to be that Fontane's realism takes German literature beyond 'Naturalism' and heralds 'Modernism', and that his topics and preoccupations reflecta kind of delayed social and political development in Germany and are thus reflections ofthe infamous Sonderweg. Here future studies will surely come to more differentiated evaluations. 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...