This volume of new essays by leading scholars treats a representative sampling of German realist prose from the period 1848 to 1900, the period of its dominance of the German literary landscape. It includes essays on familiar, canonical authors -- Stifter, Freytag, Raabe, Fontane, Thomas Mann -- and canonical texts, but also considers writers frequently omitted from traditional literary histories, such as Luise Mühlbach, Friedrich Spielhagen, Louise von François, Karl May, and Eugenie Marlitt. The introduction situates German realism in the context of both German literary history and of developments in other European literatures, and surveys the most prominent critical studies of ninteenth-century realism. The essays treat the following topics: Stifter's Brigitta and the lesson of realism; Mühlbach, Ranke, and the truth of historical fiction; regional histories as national history in Freytag's Die Ahnen; gender and nation in Louise von François's historical fiction; theory, reputation, and the career of Friedrich Spielhagen; Wilhelm Raabe and the German colonial experience; the poetics of work in Freytag, Stifter, and Raabe; Jewish identity in Berthold Auerbach's novels; Eugenie Marlitt's narratives of virtuous desire; the appeal of Karl May in the Wilhelmine Empire; Thomas Mann's portrayal of male-male desire in his early short fiction; and Fontane's Effi Briest and the end of realism. Contributors: Robert C. Holub, Brent O. Petersen, Lynne Tatlock, Thomas C. Fox, Jeffrey L. Sammons, John Pizer, Hans J. Rindisbacher, Irene S. Di Maio, Kirsten Belgum, Nina Berman, Robert Tobin, Russell A. Berman. Todd Kontje is professor of German at the University of California, San Diego.

The almost complete disregard of the verse epic as a genre still worthy of meaningful discussion and earnest investigation is all too apparent in German literary criticism. The only attempt to view the genre in its evolution through the centuries is Heinrich Maiworm's valuable but necessarily somewhat perfunctory historical survey of the German epic which appeared in the second volume of Deutsche Philologie im Auf,iss. There is as yet, however, no literary study of the German verse epic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period which is of particular interest to such a study and indeed crucial to the genre itself, since it was during this period that the novel claimed its final and apparently irrevocable victory over its predecessor, a form which had once been hallowed but was now declared a dead genre. It is not the lack of sufficient material that could explain this neglect, for in terms of sheer quantity and, we believe, not quantity alone, there is enough material for more than one study. The prime purpose of this work, then, is to attempt, if not to fill this conspicuous gap, at least to begin narrowing it somewhat, and in so doing to determine in how far the continuing existence of this vacuum in German literary appreciation is in fact justified.

Since the appearance of its first edition in Germany in 1979, A History of German Literature has established itself as a classic work used by students and anyone interested in German literature. The volume chronologically traces the development of German literature from the Middle Ages to the present day. Throughout this chronology, literary developments are set in a social and political context. This includes a final chapter, written for this latest edition, on the consequences of the reunification of Germany in 1990. Thoroughly interdiscipinary in method, the work also reflects recent developments in literary criticism and history. Highly readable and stimulating, A History of German Literature succeeds in making the literature of the past as immediate and engaging as the works of the present. It is both a scholary study and an invaluable reference work for students.

In this study the works of Wilhelm Raabe (1831 1910) are being discussed, taking into account the emerge of the perspectival narration, culminating in the Braunschweig period (1870-1920). The book starts with a survey of the point of view theory, including the concept of multiple perspective, and then focusses on the works of Raabe in which these various techniques will be demonstrated. Special attention is paid to three works of the Braunschweig period; "Der Draumling, Das Horn von Wanza" and "Kloster Lugau."