W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity

Long, J. J.

ISBN 10: 0231145128 / ISBN 13: 9780231145121

Published by Columbia University Press, 2007

About this Item

New York. 2007. Columbia University Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket With Some Slice Marks Along the Bottom Front Spine. 9780231145121. 210 oages. hardcover. Jacket image - Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, photograph by Diane Asseo Griliches from her book 'Library: The Drama Within.'. keywords: Europe Germany Literature Literary Criticism W.G. Sebald World Literature. DESCRIPTION - The contemporary German author W. G. Sebald was a master of the fiction of recollection and observation, often exploring the reverberations of World War II on the personal and collective memories of Germans and Jews. His rich body of work earned him legions of fans across the globe, but in the wake of his death in 2001, Sebald also became the subject of extensive critical study. Literary scholars have identified a number of subjects that frequently appear in Sebald's novels: the Holocaust, trauma and memory, melancholy, photography, travel, intertextuality, and the nature and meaning of home, but they have yet to locate an overarching narrative that ties these topics to the broader historical trajectories with which Sebald's work is also fundamentally concerned. In W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, J. J. Long identifies a wider meta-problem' in Sebald's work-the problem of modernity. The numerous archival institutions and processes that lie at the heart of modernity are repeatedly explored in Sebald's novels. Photography, museums, libraries, and other institutions for producing and preserving knowledge are among Sebald's main obsessions. Following Foucault, these systems are seen as central to the exercise of power and the constitution of subjectivity, themes embodied in Sebald's melancholy search for autonomous selfhood in an increasingly impersonal and bureaucratized age. Considering the evocation of wonder in the prose narratives of Vertigo, family albums in The Emigrants, the ambulatory narrative in The Rings of Saturn, and the archival subject in Austerlitz, Long advances a highly original interpretation of the author's oeuvre, arguing that Sebald's project needs to be understood as a response not merely to post-Holocaust trauma but to the longer history of modernity. inventory #3589 Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket With Some Slice Marks Along the Bottom Front Spine.

Seller Inventory # z3589

Bibliographic Details

• Title: W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231145128
• ISBN 13: 9780231145121
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

The contemporary German author W. G. Sebald was a master of the fiction of recollection and observation, often exploring the reverberations of World War II on the personal and collective memories of Germans and Jews. His rich body of work earned him legions of fans across the globe, but in the wake of his death in 2001, Sebald also became the subject of extensive critical study. Literary scholars have identified a number of subjects that frequently appear in Sebald's novels: the Holocaust, trauma and memory, melancholy, photography, travel, intertextuality, and the nature and meaning of home, but they have yet to locate an overarching narrative that ties these topics to the broader historical trajectories with which Sebald's work is also fundamentally concerned.

In W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, J. J. Long identifies a wider "meta-problem" in Sebald's work—the problem of modernity. The numerous archival institutions and processes that lie at the heart of modernity are repeatedly explored in Sebald's novels. Photography, museums, libraries, and other institutions for producing and preserving knowledge are among Sebald's main obsessions. Following Foucault, these systems are seen as central to the exercise of power and the constitution of subjectivity, themes embodied in Sebald's melancholy search for autonomous selfhood in an increasingly impersonal and bureaucratized age. Considering the evocation of wonder in the prose narratives of Vertigo, family albums in The Emigrants, the ambulatory narrative in The Rings of Saturn, and the archival subject in Austerlitz, Long advances a highly original interpretation of the author's oeuvre, arguing that Sebald's project needs to be understood as a response not merely to post-Holocaust trauma but to the longer history of modernity.

About the Author

J. J. Long is professor of German at the University of Durham. He is the author of The Novels of Thomas Bernhard and coeditor of W. G. Sebald: A Critical Companion. He has published widely on twentieth-century literature and has been a recipient of the Max Kade Prize for Best Essay in Modern Austrian Literature, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize.