Writing the Mountains : The Alpine Form in German Fiction

Jens Klenner

ISBN 13: 9798765106518

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2025

About this Item

nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - Writing the Mountainsreconsiders the role of mountains in German language fiction from 1800 to the present and argues that in a range of texts, from E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'Die Bergwerke zu Falun' (1819) to Elfriede Jelinek's Die Kinder der Toten(1995) and beyond, mountains serve as dynamic spaces of material change that generate aesthetic and narrative innovation. In contrast to dominant critical approaches to the Alpine landscape in literature, in which mountain ranges often features as passive settings, or which trace the influence of geographical and geological sciences in literary productions, this study argues for the dynamic role in literature of presumably rigid mineral structures.In German-language fiction after 1800, the counter-intuitive topology of rocky mountain ranges and unfathomable subterranean depths of the Alpine imaginary functions as a space of exception which appears to reconfirm and radically challenge the foundations of Enlightenment thought. Writing the Mountainsreads the mountain range as a rigid yet permeable liminal space. Within this zone, semiotic orders are unsettled, as is the division between organic and inorganic, between the human and the other.

Seller Inventory # 9798765106518

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Writing the Mountains : The Alpine Form in German Fiction
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798765106518
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 216W x 140H x 12D millimeters 216 millimeters width by 140 millimeters height by 12 millimeters depth
• Weight: 271 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Writing the Mountains reconsiders the role of mountains in German language fiction from 1800 to the present and argues that in a range of texts, from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Die Bergwerke zu Falun” (1819) to Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten (1995) and beyond, mountains serve as dynamic spaces of material change that generate aesthetic and narrative innovation. In contrast to dominant critical approaches to the Alpine landscape in literature, in which mountain ranges often features as passive settings, or which trace the influence of geographical and geological sciences in literary productions, this study argues for the dynamic role in literature of presumably rigid mineral structures. In German-language fiction after 1800, the counter-intuitive topology of rocky mountain ranges and unfathomable subterranean depths of the Alpine imaginary functions as a space of exception which appears to reconfirm and radically challenge the foundations of Enlightenment thought. Writing the Mountains reads the mountain range as a rigid yet permeable liminal space. Within this zone, semiotic orders are unsettled, as is the division between organic and inorganic, between the human and the other.

About the Author

Jens Klenner is Associate Professor of German at Bowdoin College, USA. His research on questions of literary form and the environment focuses on contemporary Austrian and German literature and culture from 1800 to the present. Among his publications are essays on Thomas Bernhard, Bertold Brecht, Paul Celan, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Franz Kafka, Elfriede Jelinek, and Georg Simmel.