This major study reassesses Adalbert Stifter's work within the context of the tradition of nineteenth-century European fictional prose.

This 1948 text was the first complete study of Austrian prose writer Adalbert Stifter's work to appear in English.

Provides a view of the late Stifter as a forerunner of twentieth-century modernism.Adalbert Stifter has always been viewed as a natural heir to the Great Classical tradition, even by those critics who detect disturbing subtexts in his fiction. But he should be viewed quite differently: however well disguised, heis in truth a closet modernist, and a major trailblazer for Kafka and the Absurd. This is most evident in his late fiction, which has been almost universally ignored, dismissed or disparaged by his critics. His last novel Witiko in particular has been conspicuously neglected by both nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics. Ragg-Kirkby demonstrates -- largely by way of close reading -- that this is Stifter's extreme masterpiece. Beneath the surface of Biedermeier stuffiness is a vision of fracture, emptiness, meaninglessness, and mania not only more radical than that of any other 19th-century author, but arguably more radical than that of any 20th-century author, precisely because there is such a disjuncture between text and sub-text. In his final novel, Stifter simply leaves the future behind. Helena Ragg-Kirkby is a lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield.uncture between text and sub-text. In his final novel, Stifter simply leaves the future behind. Helena Ragg-Kirkby is a lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield.uncture between text and sub-text. In his final novel, Stifter simply leaves the future behind. Helena Ragg-Kirkby is a lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield.uncture between text and sub-text. In his final novel, Stifter simply leaves the future behind. Helena Ragg-Kirkby is a lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield.

This study focuses on the crucial interplay between dialogue and narrative in Adalbert Stifter's works and relates this to their overall structure. Stifter, a conservative and often didactic writer, is nevertheless shown to present a complex view of reality which incorporates subjective and sometimes subversive voices.

Designed to provide English readers of German literature the opportunity to familiarize themselves with both the established canon and newly emerging literatures that reflect the concerns of women and ethnic minorities, the Encyclopedia of German Literature includes more than 500 entries on writers, individual work, and topics essential to an understanding of this rich literary tradition. Drawing on the expertise of an international group of experts, the essays in the encyclopedia reflect developments of the latest scholarship in German literature, culture, and history and society. In addition to the essays, author entries include biographies and works lists; and works entries provide information about first editions, selected critical editions, and English-language translations. All entries conclude with a list of further readings.

'A New History of German Literature' offers some 200 essays on events in German literary history.

This work explores the intersection of the material and poetic economies in Soll und Haben and Der Nachsommer. It demonstrates how the main poetical strategies of the two novels, dichotomization (Soll und Haben) and total economization (Der Nachsommer), are defined by economic themes, structures, and forms. The «economopoetics» of the novels, i.e. the multitude of connections between economics and aesthetics, pervades the texts on three different levels: as content, as representational model, and as literary strategy. Although very different in their treatment of topics relating to business and economics, both novels are driven by narratives parsed with economic expression. The diverging patterns of economopoetics support central commentaries on their underlying realist aesthetics. One important finding is that, in spite of money's apparent absence from the core content of some literary texts, economic relations are inherent in the narrative structure of those texts. The book shows that economopoetics is relevant not only to any extant literature which attempts explicitly to thematize business and economics (such as Soll und Haben), but also to that which does not (such as Der Nachsommer). Economic organizing principles are pervasive signatures of the novel's aesthetic.