Reviews of Peter’s attainment to a ‘proper’ way of thinking and behaving—but not without numerous pitfalls and follies. One can see some of the patterns of the later and greater novels emerging in this tale: the wife whose moral strength holds everything together in Anne Bäbi Jowäger (/), Geld und Geist (), and Uli der Pächter (). Other scenes also point towards later fulfilment—Peter’s courtship, for instance—and notably the heart-rending account of a child’s death (see again Anne Bäbi Jowäger). Peter is the victim of his own hubris—at a schoolmasterly level—but also of forces, official and local, that thwart him in his well-meaning service for the people around him. Because he—or through him Gotthelf—is stating his case to those on high, the novel is replete with discussion, oen of cantonal educational policies or of the practical issues of teacher training, that make it more than occasionally into a pedagogical tract. e edition, with a wider German readership in mind, shortens some of these sections. But the constant references to poor pay and a penurious household put all this discussion into a wider human perspective. T C, C R P Habsburgs ‘Dark Continent’: Postkoloniale Lektüren zur österreichischen Literatur und Kultur im langen . Jahrhundert. By C R. (Kultur — Herrscha — Differenz, ) Tübingen: Francke. . pp. €. ISBN – –––. e present volume assembles eight articles that had previously been published separately, two originally in English. ese are complemented by some additional material and, by and large, cleansed of duplication, so that all in all quite a coherent whole emerges—coherent, in that the arguments follow similar lines and serve the same overall agenda. is agenda may be summarized as an emphatic affirmation of the appropriateness and productiveness of framing Habsburgian conditions, as re- flected in commensurate discourses, in categories derived from postcolonial theory, so that they become readable as manifestations of colonial configurations. e idea itself is not new—conditions in many parts of the Habsburg Empire, not least the remote ones of Galicia and Bukowina, and their Polish–German–Ruthenian–Jewish cultural patchwork, have attracted commentary based on postcolonial approaches. Moreover, Habsburg Austria’s complicity, though as a rather silent participant, in the Weltpolitik of the so-called ‘concert’ of European Great Powers since , and with it colonialist aspiration in the overseas, has been demonstrated cogently. e Orientalist undercurrents, complete with occasionally racist implications in many seminal texts of the Austrian literary canon, have also been acknowledged before— but rarely has the point been argued with such erudition and conviction, and by bringing into play some very pronounced sites of interest. As far as content and material are concerned, the book has three distinct parts: a theoretical, a literary, and a historical one. e first, theoretical part meticulously interrogates extant theories for their applicability to Habsburg conditions and their MLR, ., potential to explain the associated phenomena. Most useful in this early discussion is a triple approach to Habsburg coloniality—as Befund (i.e. the respects in which accepted criteria of colonialism can be productively employed to frame Habsburg reality), Befindlichkeit (a state of coloniality that stretches from racist attitudes to the integration of the domestic into colonialist economies, and a concomitant discourse that reinforces hierarchies and hegemony), and Betrachtungsweise (i.e. colonialism as a lens)—that provides a clear and lucid framework to the investigation (pp. – ). A discussion of Imagology as a relevant methodology, recently overshadowed by other theoretical musings and easily dismissed as a mere listing of widespread tropes and stereotypes, is then used to emphasize the necessity of survey to generate meaningful data. is material serves as the context for specific manifestations of xenologic circularity in concrete scenarios, i.e. the reciprocal definition of the self and the other, the near and the distant, the familiar and the strange, etc. e two analytical parts of the book then revolve (a) around literary texts that imagine scenarios of intercultural encounter and the appropriation of otherness, namely Franz Grillparzer’s dramatic trilogy Das goldene Vließ (–), Peter Altenberg’s famous Ashantee sketches (), and Alfred Kubin’s utopian novel Die andere Seite (); and...
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May 5, 2024
Hung-Chieh Chang 
Open Access