Infinitely Determinable
Children and Childhood in Modern Literature
Published on 23. March 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
232 pages
978-3-0358-0316-7 (ISBN)
Description
Upon the "discovery of childhood," as named by Philippe Ariès, bourgeois culture and modern literature marked out an arcane realm that, while scarcely accessible for adults, acted as a space for projections of the most contradictory kind and diverse ideological purposes: childhood. As this book reveals, from the eighteenth century onwards, the child increasingly came into focus in literature as a mysterious creature. Now the child seems a strange being, constantly unsettling and alienating, although exposed to ongoing territorialization. This is possible because the space of 'childhood' is essentially blank and indefinite. Modernity, therefore, has discovered it as a zone, in the words of Friedrich Schiller of "boundless determinability."
More details
Persons
Author
Davide Giuriato Davide Giuriato ist ordentlicher Professor für Neuere deutsche Literatur an der Universität Zürich. Weitere Publikationen: Mikrographien. Zu einer Poetologie des Schreibens in Walter Benjamins Kindheitserinnerungen (2006); »klar und deutlich«. Ästhetik des Kunstlosen im 18./19. Jahrhundert (2015); Adalbert Stifter-Handbuch (Hg. mit Christian Begemann, 2017).
Translation
Content
9
-
19
Introduction
(Davide Giuriato)
21
-
37
Idylls of Childhood (Hoffmann-Stifter)
(Davide Giuriato)
39
-
47
Christmas
(Davide Giuriato)
49
-
67
Rescuing Children (Stifter)
(Davide Giuriato)
69
-
100
On the Threshold of Writing (Rilke-Walser-Benjamin)
(Davide Giuriato)
69
-
100
On the Threshold of Writing (Rilke-Walser-Benjamin)
(Davide Giuriato)
101
-
111
Becoming-Child (Walser)
(Davide Giuriato)
115
-
133
Little Hans (Freud-Kafka)
(Davide Giuriato)
137
-
153
This Briefest Childhood (Kafka)
(Davide Giuriato)
155
-
176
An Angel's Grace, a Devil's Grin
(Davide Giuriato)
177
-
211
Notes
(Davide Giuriato)
213
-
214
Acknowledgments
(Davide Giuriato)
215
-
232
Bibliography
(Davide Giuriato)