
Authors and the World
Literary Authorship in Modern Germany
Rebecca Braun(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic USA (Publisher)
Published on 21. March 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-1-5013-9106-4 (ISBN)
Description
Authors and the World traces how four core 'modes of authorship' have developed and inflect one another in modern Germany through a series of twenty different case studies, including the work of Thomas Mann, Guenter Grass, Anna Seghers, Walter Hoellerer, Felicitas Hoppe and Katja Petrowskaja, and original interview material with contemporary writers Ulrike Draesner, Olga Martynova and Ulrike Almut Sandig. 'Modes of authorship' are attitudes taken towards being an author that can be seen both in what an individual author does and in how a particular literary tradition or trend is perceived and mediated by others both within and beyond Pierre Bourdieu's literary field. Consequently, they deliberately straddle questions of literary production and reception.
Rebecca Braun sets out how the commemorative, celebratory, utopian and satirical modes interact with one another to produce a number of models of authorship that carry either foundational or otherwise normative force for society. In varying combinations and with deep roots in 19th- and early 20th-century practices, the four modes of authorship create a remarkably (and at times troublingly) stable German literature network that to a large degree still determines the way contemporary German-speaking authors enact their cultural significance in their writing, engage with their local circumstances, and are more broadly received around the world.
Authors and the World provides not just a radically new approach to German literary history but a thoroughly new paradigm for thinking about literary authorship.
Rebecca Braun sets out how the commemorative, celebratory, utopian and satirical modes interact with one another to produce a number of models of authorship that carry either foundational or otherwise normative force for society. In varying combinations and with deep roots in 19th- and early 20th-century practices, the four modes of authorship create a remarkably (and at times troublingly) stable German literature network that to a large degree still determines the way contemporary German-speaking authors enact their cultural significance in their writing, engage with their local circumstances, and are more broadly received around the world.
Authors and the World provides not just a radically new approach to German literary history but a thoroughly new paradigm for thinking about literary authorship.
Reviews / Votes
Rebecca Braun's amazingly varied study of authorship shifts the view from the lives of writers to the practice of authorship - the crafted persona of a whole social environment. Along the way, Braun shakes up our understanding of the contemporary German literary scene. Moving quickly past the familiar male gatekeepers of Grass, Enzensberger and Walser, she brings us face-to-face with neglected literary mavericks from the East and new voices of women immigrants from Russia, Romaniaand Serbia. A very original study in which 'place' becomes a fleeting ideological Heimat. * Timothy Brennan, Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of Minnesota, USA * Rebecca Braun's Authors and the World represents an important foray into a new contemporary typology of authorship that will benefit scholars in literary studies and beyond. With a focus on German-speaking literature, this investigation of celebratory, commemorative, utopian and satirical modes of authorship provides the reader with pertinent insights into the post-war literary industry and its modes of self-representation and brings into focus female writers marginalized in recent canonization processes. * Birgit Lang, Professor of German, University of Melbourne, Australia * Highly original and immensely readable, Rebecca Braun's impressive study provides us with a new model for understanding literary authorship and the contexts and factors that shape it in the twentieth century and beyond. The result is both a brilliant reading of cultural history and an important theoretical re-evaluation of known concepts of authorship. Through detailed interpretations of a stunning variety of cultural texts and archives (novels, journalistic writings, poetry, films and documentaries, social networks, places, and objects), Braun develops four distinct modes of performative authorship (celebratory, commemorative, utopian, satirical) and shows how they can overlap, coalesce, and inflect one another. She uses this innovative framework to read of some of the most important texts of the German-language canon in East and West Germany; she moves from the writing of the "literary giants" of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Thomas Mann to the contemporary, transnational texts of Olga Martynova and Katja Petrowskaja. Conversations with three female authors round out this remarkable book and illustrate in practice Braun's central argument that authorship is a co-creative, iterative process. Authors and the World will be an indispensable reference in German Studies on contemporary literary authorship. I loved reading it! * Anke S. Biendarra, Associate Professor of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine, USA *
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
460 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5013-9106-4 (9781501391064)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
07/2022
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€33.49
Available for download

E-Book
07/2022
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€33.49
Available for download
Person
Rebecca Braun is Established Professor of German and World Literature and Executive Dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland. She has published widely on practices of authorship around the world, and with particular expertise in German-language writing. Major publications include Constructing Authorship in the Work of Guenter Grass (2008), Cultural Impact in the German Context (2010; co-edited with Lyn Marven), Transnational German Studies (2020; co-edited with Benedict Schofield), and World Authorship (2020; co-edited with Tobias Boes & Emily Spiers).
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Translations
Introduction: Rethinking Goethe's World Literature through Questions of Authorship
1. Four Modes of Authorship across the German Twentieth Century
2. The Exemplary Creator: Modelling Authorship in Post-War West Germany
3. The Exemplary Pedagogue: Alternative Foundations for Belonging in the GDR
4. Mediating Authorship in Berlin and Frankfurt, 1959-1989
5. After the Death of the Author: The Rise of the Utopian Mode, 1988-2018
6. New Collaborations: Models of Transnational Authorship in Contemporary German-speaking Europe
In Conversation: Ulrike Draesner: On Creating Contexts for Literature
In Conversation: Olga Martynova on Living in Multiple Literary Worlds
In Conversation: Ulrike Almut Sandig on Collaborating across Media, Genres, and Countries
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Note on Translations
Introduction: Rethinking Goethe's World Literature through Questions of Authorship
1. Four Modes of Authorship across the German Twentieth Century
2. The Exemplary Creator: Modelling Authorship in Post-War West Germany
3. The Exemplary Pedagogue: Alternative Foundations for Belonging in the GDR
4. Mediating Authorship in Berlin and Frankfurt, 1959-1989
5. After the Death of the Author: The Rise of the Utopian Mode, 1988-2018
6. New Collaborations: Models of Transnational Authorship in Contemporary German-speaking Europe
In Conversation: Ulrike Draesner: On Creating Contexts for Literature
In Conversation: Olga Martynova on Living in Multiple Literary Worlds
In Conversation: Ulrike Almut Sandig on Collaborating across Media, Genres, and Countries
Bibliography
Index