Daniel Kehlmann Research Articles

Blurring Boundaries: Real and Hyperreal Elements in Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World

The academic paper centers on evaluating the real and hyperreal elements in the German novel Measuring the World(2005) written by Daniel Kehlmann. The novel is set in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during the Enlightenment era, and bears a resemblance of the prominent figures of real time, namely the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and the geographer Alexander von Humboldtof the same centuries. The historical description of these prominent figures undergoes alteration, and the writer adds several dramatic events to it. This research paper attempts to analyse the theory of hyperreality by the French theorist Jean Baudrillard. The paper also highlights the concept of Simulation that Kehlmann employs in altering the reality with representations. In further, the paper aims to provide an understanding of the examination of narration, character development, and exaggerated events exploring the multiple-layered narrative.

Лингвокультурологический потенциал пресуппозиционного компонента лексических единиц моделирования культурного пространства (на материале немецкого языка)

The paper examines the linguocultural features of the influence of presupposition on the modelling of the cultural space of a literary text. The analysis of the presuppositional component of linguistic units expressed by various lexico-semantic means contributes to the identification of extralinguistic information in the text. The aim of the research is to determine the linguocultural potential of presupposition in the text based on the analysis of the features of lexical units and their contextual relations reflecting the specifics of culturally relevant elements in Daniel Kehlmann’s novel “Tyll”. The scientific originality of the research lies in applying the theory of presupposition to the linguistic modelling of the cultural space of a literary text. The research findings showed that the presupposition of culture-specific lexical units contextually interacts with other intra- and inter-lexical means and participates in the formation of a model of the cultural space of the text as a hierarchically structured system of culturally contingent meanings. The combination of the denotative, connotative and other types of semantic meaning of lexemes determines the isolation of linguoculturemes in a literary text, which makes it possible to gradually explore the cultural space of the analysed German historical novel.

Network Analysis in Literature and the Arts: Rethinking Agency and Creativity

AbstractThe essay proposes to think of the creative subject as an actor in a network, that is, following Bruno Latour, as a »moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it« (Latour 2005, 46). It explores what it means to bring a network analysis to lectures on poetics by employing both a structuralist visualization informed by a computational method and a sociological method according to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). ANT is used to make traceable what with Hugh Kenner is called »elsewhere communities« consisting of spirits and minds along with objects and spaces. This serves to defend a method of criticism that is not oriented towards unearthing deep textual meanings, but which foregrounds the arts’ relatability and potential for provoking association and attachments. Network analysis in the arts and humanities, so goes the argument, has the potential to be much more than a formalist description of connections made. It offers means for detecting the implicit and explicit presences of a variety of different actors in or relating to works of art and challenges us to move beyond established analytical categories such as intertextuality and intermediality by opening the inquiry to a wider diversity of actors and to redefine our understanding of creativity.The article focuses on networks that emerge in lectures in which renowned artists from around the world share with general audiences their views on work processes, motivations to create, and artistic self-understandings. These are known asPoetikvorlesungenin Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but do not have a distinct label outside of the German-speaking literary scene. The article departs from the observation that making connections and forming artistic associations are key components of these lectures as this feature can be found frequently. It first outlines genre characteristics of lectures on the arts with particular focus on networks that such lectures participate in. Emblematic examples are the Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics by the German novelist Daniel Kehlmann (given in 2014) and the Tanner Lectures by the Canadian writer and critic Hugh Kenner (given in 1999). Kehlmann depicts his artistic influences, sources of inspiration, and references to existing contexts by pretending to summon spirits, a rhetorical gesture akin to a necromancy. Kenner calls networks that evolve from making such connections »elsewhere communities«.The essay explores what a network-oriented analysis of this genre could look like by turning to the Norton Lectures by the German filmmaker Wim Wenders (given in 2018). These serve to test two different analytical approaches. The article relies both on network visualization and on tracing of networks according to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The article thus offers both a graphic representation of references from Wenders’ lectures and a textual tracing of associations according to the methodology outlined by Latour.An important finding is that network analysis, no matter its method, offers exciting opportunities in revealing the significance of relations and associations. Network analysis challenges literary scholars to revisit and rethink intertextuality, intermediality, or intersubjectivity and invites them to unearth a new diversity of actors. The article argues that graphic visualizations done with computational methods can be instrumental in the immediacy with which they communicate findings, especially when it comes to findings from a large corpus. The article then moves on to explore the nuances and theoretical implications that ANT offers in addition to the network visualization. A major appeal of ANT is, so the argument, that it offers insight into processes that are central to literary criticism: translation, mediation, and the evolving dynamics that stem from them. Since lectures on poetics are located at the intersection of artistic creation, authorial self-presentation, and criticism, they offer a particularly good window into the interactions ofpoiesisandaesthesis, of creative work and its dependency on the reception of other artworks. The argument concludes by suggesting that network analysis invites theorists to reconceptualize reader-response theory toward what scholars call comparative media studies.Finally, the article briefly considers lectures on the arts not as objects of criticism, but as a blueprint for scholarship that looks to re-envision literary criticism and its engagement of the reading public.

The Biographical Novelist as an Agent of Pain: A Conversation with Daniel Kehlmann

The Biographical Novelist as an Agent of Pain: A Conversation with Daniel Kehlmann

Daniel Kehlmanns Roman ‚Mahlers Zeit‘ und Quantenmechanik. Eine interdisziplinäre Interpretation

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary reinterpretation of the novel ‘Mahler’s Time’ by Daniel Kehlmann, arguing that this work explores the epistemological consequences of quantum mechanics. It is shown that the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is disguised in the text as the fictional physical Valentinov paradox, which shapes the poetic statement as well as the structure of the novel. The interdisciplinary interpretation is also reinforced by Kehlmann’s poetological essays.

„Aber was, […] wenn es nicht so ist?“ Ambivalente Figurationen der Zeit in Daniel Kehlmanns ‚Mahlers Zeit‘

Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Mahlers Zeit questions the role of time as a fundamental tool through which humans access the world. While the novel’s protagonist believes that he can debunk the linearity of time, the narration of the text remains ambiguous about whether or not he is right. As the text oscillates between different conceptions of time—each presented as plausible only to be denied again—it develops an image of the world as an inscrutable place where humans cannot transcend the sphere of phenomena because they are always thrown back to their sensorium. The unmediated juxtaposition of the incompatible that prevents obtaining metaphysical certainty implies a rejection of the concepts of Magical Realism as well as Surrealism, both of which presuppose a knowledge of the metaphysical structure of the narrated world. Therefore, Mahlers Zeit requires a different classification: Gebrochener Realismus (Broken Realism). Moreover, because of the strict functionality of the moments of uncertainty, the category of Gebrochener Realismus is even more appropriate than Todorov’s fantastic.

Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll: Historical Fiction for the Information Age

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll, a historical novel about the legendary jester, Till Eulenspiegel, set in the Thirty Years War. Kehlmann’s work is about the making of meaning in an era in flux. He brings a postmodern awareness to the premodern world, infusing ethics and affect into questions about the nature of knowledge and the writing of history. His characters interpret ambiguous evidence and spin truth in tales that have real-life consequences. The result is postmodern melodrama, historical fiction for the age of information.

DER HUMBOLDT-EFFEKT: VERMITTLUNG UND VERDRÄNGUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) published hundreds of essays and articles in journals and newspapers on five continents, making a considerable impact and influencing contemporary scientists and writers from Goethe and Darwin to Gabriel García Márquez and Daniel Kehlmann. These diverse writings were not collected and edited until 2019, on the occasion of his 250th birthday. They show Humboldt as a master of minor genres, an international and multilingual author, an early post-disciplinary researcher and a subtle autobiographical writer, a public intellectual and a post-colonial critic. They include studies on indigenous American peoples, the migration of plants and the politics of epidemiology. Paradoxically, the success of Humboldt’s public communication generated a mythology that eclipsed the reception of his research.

ПОРІВНЯЛЬНИЙ АНАЛІЗ МОДИФІКАЦІЙ ЖАНРОВОЇ ФОРМИ «РОМАН» (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ РОМАНУ ЮРІЯ АНДРУХОВИЧА «КОХАНЦІ ЮСТИЦІЇ» І РОМАНУ ДАНІЕЛЯ КЕЛЬМАННА «СЛАВА. РОМАН З ДЕВ’ЯТИ ІСТОРІЙ»)

The article deals with modifications of the genre form "novel". These modifications consist of novellas but they show a new quality: the coherent harmonious whole. The comparative analysis extends to the text categories. The category of integrity is the hyper-category of text. It is a bipolar unity with discreteness. The tonality as a category belongs to the first degree categories and expresses bipolar unity of the personality/impersonality on a level with coherence and completeness. Then follow the second degree categories (major) - composition form text organization (KMF), architectonic form text organization (AMF) and oralness / writeness. To these categories submit the third degree categories (primary): phonologic, grammar, semantic and stylistic. They are primary only at the text and in the language system they can have two or more degrees. As the relationships of the parameter "text categories " equivalence, inclusiveness, intersection and inconsistency were considered. The comparison of the novels by Yurii Andrukhovych and by Daniel Kehlmann shows the equivalence of the text categories integrity, coherence and completeness (cohesion), oralness / writeness. The same applies to the categories KMF and AMF. It should be noted, that the equivalence is compensatory at the level of simple categories. Simultaneity of events as a manifestation of integrity is expressed in the novel ofAndrukhovych mainly by anachronisms, Kehlmann does not use they (relationship of inconsistency), but Kehlmann connects his stories with characters, it is absent in the work of Andrukhovych, who minimally mentions some characters in the last chapter. The allusion to cinematography is represented in Andrukhovych's novel through the whole text and the ring repetition (in the title and at the end of the novel). It is something else in the novel by Kehlmann. The character Ralph Tanner, a film actor, who appears in one story as the main character and in four stories as a minor character shows that the novel has the tangency to the cinematography.

Денотативный аспект значения лексемы как единицы моделирования культурного пространства в художественном тексте

The paper aims to identify and analyze the ability of the denotative aspect of the meaning of a lexeme to model the cultural space in a literary text. We provide an analysis of the concepts of cultural space and a linguocultureme as a unit that models the cultural space in a literary text. The study examines the relationship between a lexeme and denotatum contributing to the formation of a linguocultureme in general and the modeling of cultural space in particular. Using the method of continuous sampling, we selected examples of lexemes whose denotative meaning determines the formation of linguistic culture and the modeling of cultural space in Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Tyll. With the help of linguoculturological analysis and the modeling method, we studied how a lexeme’s denotative meaning influences the identification of elements of cultural space in the literary text. The frequency of references to denotata expressed by linguistic units, their compatibility and the connection between the denotative meaning of a lexeme and the presupposition appear to be important aspects in the analysis of the cultural space modeling in a literary text. In the course of the study, lexemes that carry culturally significant information at the denotative level were found to endow other linguistic units with linguocultural potential, raising them to the rank of linguistic means of the cultural space modeling. At the same time, an increase in the number of methods for modeling the cultural space contributes to its expansion within the framework of a literary text. From a theoretical perspective, the research is significant in that there has been developed a model for analyzing the denotative aspect of the meaning of a lexeme in order to identify the elements of cultural space in a literary text. The research results are valuable both for the theory of language in general and the theory of cultural linguistics in particular.

Beyond Faith and Reason

This article approaches postsecularity from a historical angle by considering three recent German-language novels which reflect present-day ambivalences regarding religion and secularity through a genealogy of the present. Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World, Ilija Trojanow’s Collector of Worlds, and Sibylle Lewitscharoff’s Blumenberg explore the gaps, fissures, and contradictions in the dichotomy of faith and reason which so haunts the present engagement with religion. They depict nineteenth- and twentieth-century protagonists who embrace a disenchanted outlook on the world, yet struggle with the specters of an older, enchanted cosmos. Through variants of the literary fantastic, and unreliable and polyperspectival narration, these books develop a view of the world that goes beyond facile dichotomies of faith and reason.

Biographical narrative in the novel “Measuring the World” by Daniel Kehlmann

2. Hellberg W.D.(2012), Lektüreschlüssel. Daniel Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt.Reclam, Stuttgart. ISBN 9783498035280. Google Scholar

Der Reformator und Aufklärer Martin Opitz (1597-1639): Ein Humanist im Zeitalter der Krisis by Klaus Garber

 Reviews starting point for readers who want to expand their understanding of Juan Rulfo, his work, and his milieu. S U A M S Der Reformator und Aulärer Martin Opitz (–): Ein Humanist im Zeitalter der Krisis. By K G. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter. .  pp.£.. ISBN ––––. is seminal, engaging, and well-written volume is the culmination of Klaus Garber’s research on Martin Opitz, who is generally regarded as the father of German poetry, a figure situated between humanism and the Enlightenment. It is not Garber’s goal to provide a biography full of facts limited solely to Opitz’s life or a comprehensive interpretation of each of Opitz’s writings. Garber writes his book in the tradition of Richard Alewyn and Konrad Burdach, who emphasize the importance of demonstrating the paths literary communication followed, the ‘geistige Culturstrassen’ (p. ), and additionally the pursuit of ‘Raumkunde’, meaning an exploration of places of importance in Opitz’s life, for instance Breslau or Leiden. Across twenty chapters Garber offers an intellectual and geographical biography of Opitz’s life and literature. Each chapter focuses on a station of Opitz’s life and discusses one text from his œuvre, situating it in the literary, intellectual-historical, and political context of his time. In addition, Garber details Opitz’s diplomatic missions and his political involvement, convincingly showing Opitz as a proponent of the values of the Enlightenment. Garber’s focus on the religious aspects of Opitz’s life and work is stronger than on the political aspects. is sometimes comes at the cost of less discussion of Opitz’s literature than one would like; however, the detailed introduction of Opitz’s environment is a welcome addition, and Garber’s work is particularly valuable when he introduces a wide range of less familiar figures and their function in Opitz’s life, for instance his school teachers. He also strikes a good balance between these more marginal figures and the better-known Colerus, Zincgref, Brothers Dupuy, Lingelsheim, or Karl Hannibal zu Dohna, integrating the more obscure influences well into what is known about Opitz’s intellectual life, such as his membership of the Fruchtbringende Gesellscha. Of specific excellence is the Hugo Grotius chapter, where the complex intertwinement of literature, politics, and religion is demonstrated through an abundance of sources. Garber discusses Opitz’s literary development not just on a biographical level, but also in the context of the Silesian school, expanding this to a European context, and drawing convincing parallels with Petrarch and Ronsard, where the renewal of literature on the basis of an engagement with sources from antiquity led to the prominence of Latin poetry and the increasing establishment of poetry written in national languages. Furthermore, Opitz not only advocated and set rules for the writing of poetry in German, but also strove for political and religious reconciliation and tolerance. With respect to the editorial situation of Opitz’s œuvre, Garber identifies desiderata and also provides in the last chapter a generous, wide-ranging, and useful MLR, .,   overview detailing the archival situation and the general literature about Opitz, as well as offering a history of the various editions of Opitz’s work, ending with the most reliable and recent edition, the Kritische Ausgabe, begun by George SchulzBehrend in the late s; this edition publishes Opitz’s work in chronological order, based on Opitz’s first editions and ending in . Jörg Robert finishes the Schulz-Behrend edition by remaining loyal to his predessor’s editorial principles. In addition to the printed volumes there will be a digital edition, so that Opitz’s German and Latin texts and letters will finally be available in a reliable edition. B A S Alexander von Humboldt Handbuch: Leben — Werk — Wirkung. Ed. by O E. Stuttgart: Metzler. .  pp. €.. ISBN ––––. e image of Alexander von Humboldt we have inherited from the Age of Irony is marked by Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Die Vermessung der Welt (). In order to fashion himself as a witty meta-reflexive voice, the narrator invents a Humboldt character that has little in common with the historical model who was born two hundred and fiy years ago. He thus turns his character...

Alexander von Humboldt Handbuch: Leben — Werk — Wirkung ed. by Ottmar Ette

MLR, .,   overview detailing the archival situation and the general literature about Opitz, as well as offering a history of the various editions of Opitz’s work, ending with the most reliable and recent edition, the Kritische Ausgabe, begun by George SchulzBehrend in the late s; this edition publishes Opitz’s work in chronological order, based on Opitz’s first editions and ending in . Jörg Robert finishes the Schulz-Behrend edition by remaining loyal to his predessor’s editorial principles. In addition to the printed volumes there will be a digital edition, so that Opitz’s German and Latin texts and letters will finally be available in a reliable edition. B A S Alexander von Humboldt Handbuch: Leben — Werk — Wirkung. Ed. by O E. Stuttgart: Metzler. .  pp. €.. ISBN ––––. e image of Alexander von Humboldt we have inherited from the Age of Irony is marked by Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Die Vermessung der Welt (). In order to fashion himself as a witty meta-reflexive voice, the narrator invents a Humboldt character that has little in common with the historical model who was born two hundred and fiy years ago. He thus turns his character into a caricature of all the Prussian virtues that Humboldt in fact thoroughly abhorred and consistently tried to run away from. Far from being a narrow-minded empiricist, Humboldt, influenced by Kant, Goethe, and the Jena circle, was much more concerned with comparative analysis, the exploration of interdependencies, and methodological self-reflection. Far from lashing out at the world condescendingly or chauvinistically , he was in fact famed for his conviviality, his unprecedented respect for indigenous cultures, and his unwavering support of human rights. And while he may not have lacked in self-confidence, he was certainly not a grumpy lone wolf single-mindedly scanning the world for new taxa and data to further his reputation; rather, he was, first and foremost, an innovative team player who revolutionized the methodology, management, and popularization of science. An aesthetics of irony may have lost some of its lustre in a time of ‘fake news’. e publication of an Alexander von Humboldt handbook is, therefore, a welcome opportunity to provide a summary of Humboldt research and set the record straight. is new Metzler Handbuch showcases the considerable additions scientific, historical , cultural, and aesthetic research have made, over the course of the past three decades, to our understanding of this polymath. e editor, Ottmar Ette, is a scholar of Romance languages and has brought a fresh perspective to Humboldt. He has emphasized the importance of writing practices, polyglossia, and intermedia aesthetics for Humboldt’s approach to science; he has consistently foregrounded the aspect of jouissance in his empiricist and documentary practices; and he has presented him as a proto-ecologist whose ability to wed an empiricist paradigm to the self-reflection of scientific culture (and thus to an ethics of life sciences) speaks particularly powerfully to us today. It sounds as if Ette wants to create not only a role model for reunified Germany, but for the fractured legacy of the Enlightenment, liberal democracy, and cosmopolitanism at large. Humboldt will never meet these  Reviews expectations—nor will he ever heal the wounds inflicted by the ‘two cultures’ war between the sciences and the humanities. But that is beside the point. Ette’s reading of Humboldt’s cultural and aesthetic practices as an ‘unvollendetes Projekt einer anderen Moderne’ (p. ) helps us to understand our current predicaments. His versatility in doing so is infectious, and clearly many of the collaborators he has enlisted for this project have contracted the virus. e handbook sets itself the aim of uncovering the ‘verschüttete Traditionslinien’ (p. vii) of Humboldt scholarship that have been eclipsed by scientific paradigms decoupled from the transcendental and self-reflexive context from which the combinatory , comparative, and proto-ecological endeavour called Humboldtian Science emerged. It foregrounds the constitutive role that knowledge as cultural practice, epistemes of nature as interdependency—‘Alles ist Wechselwirkung’—and aesthetic practices play in such a science (Alexander von Humboldt, Das Buch der Begegnungen : Menschen, Kulturen, Geschichten aus den amerikanischen Reisetagebüchern, ed. and trans. by Ottmar Ette...

Literatuur en de normatieve aspecten van wetenschappelijke kennis

Abstract This article is about the relation of three literary texts to psychological stage theories. The texts under discussion are a novel by Dutch novelist Maarten ’t Hart (De aansprekers, 1979) and stories by Flemish writer Kristien Hemmerechts (‘Fasen’, 1996) and German author Daniel Kehlmann (‘Rosalie geht sterben’, 2009). This article especially focusses on the stage theory of dying, as formulated by the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. For each of the three texts it is argued whether there is an intertextual relation to Kübler-Ross’s work or an interdiscursive relation to stage theories in general. It is thus demonstrated how these literary texts contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about stage theories, attesting to their popularity while at the same time critically evaluating them. By means of this demonstration, it is explained how literature is able to reflect upon the interaction between knowledge and normative views.

Moral Metamorphosis in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel “Me and Kaminski”: The Transition from Egoism to Altruism

89/90’lı yıllardan itibaren edebiyatın çerçevesi, konuları ve fonksiyonunda yenilenmeye gidilir. Ayrıca 90’lı yıllardan itibaren politik, kültürel, sosyal vb. yeniliklerin de gerçekleşmesiyle Çağdaş Alman Edebiyat’ından söz edilmesi mümkün olmuştur. Bu dönemin önemli temsilcilerinden biri olan Kehlmann edebiyata bakış açısı ve ele aldığı konular bakımından çağdaşlarından belirgin bir biçimde ayrılır. Yapıtlarında ağırlıklı olarak göze çarpan iç içe geçmiş hiciv ve gerçeklik onu diğerlerinden ayırıcı özelliklerdendir. Çalışmamızda ele aldığımız Ben ve Kaminski romanı ise hicivsel bir üslupla medya etiği, bireysel ahlakı irdeler. Roman 21.yüzyılda kendini merkezileştirerek çevresine duyarsızlaşan bireyin hala içinde var olan vicdanına veya insanca olan yönüne dikkatleri çeker. Bu çalışmada yazarın “Ben ve Kaminski” romanı ahlaki başkalaşım bağlamında incelenmiştir.

Intertextuality in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel Tyll

Intertextuality in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel Tyll Marc J. Schweissinger Abstract This article examines intertextuality in the novel Tyll, by Daniel Kehlmann, from 2017. The Name Tyll refers to the old medieval figure Till Eulenspiegel. Eulenspiegel, a real-life character became popular through folk songs of the 15th and 16th centuries in Germany, but Kehlmann creates a historical novel, placing his Tyll in the Thirty Years‟ War (1618–1648), a war tormenting central Europe. Kehlmann employs literary borrowings from the original rough farce and Charles De Coster‟s world-famous version of the 19th century, The Legend of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak. But while De Coster presented his Till as a freedom fighter for the Protestant Netherlands against Catholic Spanish oppression, Kehlmann pictures an entirely different character. Moreover, in contrast to the rough farce, Kehlmann equips his Tyll with an individual biography. Tyll, suffering from childhood trauma, runs away from home and becomes a travelling artist. Caught up by the whirlwind of the Thirty Years‟ War, unprotected by law, Tyll turns from an able trickster similar to the character from the popular folk song into a fool for the so-called Winter King of Bohemia, Frederick V. Kehlmann creates an intertextual riddle, shifting back and forward in time, deliberately full of flaws and conceptual loopholes. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v7n1a16

“Далеке дзеркало”: 1618–2018 – відгомін Тридцятилітньої війни в новітній німецькомовній літературі

The article is dedicated to the historical phenomenon of Thirty Years’ War in its literary interpretation. This historical event remains an important component in the collective cultural memory of Germans. Thirty Years’ War is still considered one of the most brutal wars in German history. In connection with its 400th anniversary, relevance is given to historical researches in which the Thirty Years’ War is presented as a “distant mirror” which enables a better understanding of conflicts and threats to modernity. In this context the proposed study treats literary sources about Thirty Years’ War as an original artistic phenomenon with profound history and specific interpretation of this historical event depending on a certain age. Naturally, the baroque period of this literature stands out – till this day our idea of the catastrophe of Thirty Years’ War is shaped by such works as Simplicius Simplicissimus by H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen or the sonnet ‘Tears of the Fatherland’ by Andreas Gryphius. Baroque literature was exceptionally political, raising the problems of religion, propaganda, refugees, relations between the government and its subjects, between civilians and the army men. It told about the fight for public opinion which was conducted using all possible publicist and literary means, “about the superior right to interpret an event” which confirmed a well-known statement that the first casualty of War is Truth. However different “the individual truths” about the war were of those whose statements were recorded in literature, Grimmelshausen’s statement about the war as “a terrible and merciless beast” remains the most important. All texts about Thirty Years’ War have a different expression of the same characteristics – embodiment of the esthetics of murder and different forms of violence. That is why in the research the Thirty Years’ War is perceived as a significant historical and literary experiential model which enables direct cognitive access to modernity which is proven by such novels as Munin or Chaos in the Head („Munin oder Chaos im Kopf”, 2018) by Monika Maron and Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll („Tyll”, 2017). Contemporary novels are analyzed through the prism of history textualization theory which erases the borders between historiography and artistic literature. As a result, it is claimed that in these works Thirty Years’ War is presented as a textualized network of connections which enables construction of historical experience. Yet, it is discovered that a person is unable to learn from history. The only ironic lesson is the creative position “chaos in the head” and “fool” as a survival strategy.

You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann

You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann

The world author in us all: conceptualising fame and agency in the global literary market

ABSTRACTThis article explores the link between national success as a writer and the promotional structures of world literature in the West. It does so through critically examining how individual people relate to the various creative processes that underpin literature as it travels around the western world. The article draws in particular on Bruno Latour’s work on the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘mediators’ in the context of actor–network theory, as well as developing the idea of a ‘network intellectual’ put forward in 2015 by Fred Turner and Christine Larson. In so doing, the article finds common ground between literary studies and celebrity studies that can help parse the concept of ‘literary celebrity’. The model for understanding the links between authorship, celebrity and world literature that I propose is exemplified through reference to the intertwined contemporary careers of novelists Daniel Kehlmann and Jonathan Franzen. Both writers have achieved bestseller status in their respective national contexts (Germany/Austria and the United States), both deliberately seek to place their work and person into dialogue with key writers and works from other national traditions, and both have been systematically promoted across multiple countries as international success stories. Approaching them as contemporary case studies in both world authorship and literary celebrity allows us to reconsider how individuals carry wider cultural value in an age of rapid network expansion.