Writing the Mountains
The Alpine Form in German Fiction
Will be published approx. on 11. December 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
979-8-7651-0651-8 (ISBN)
Description
Writing the Mountains reconsiders the role of mountains in German language fiction from 1800 to the present and argues that in a range of texts, from E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Die Bergwerke zu Falun" (1819) to Elfriede Jelinek's Die Kinder der Toten (1995) and beyond, mountains serve as dynamic spaces of material change that generate aesthetic and narrative innovation. In contrast to dominant critical approaches to the Alpine landscape in literature, in which mountain ranges often features as passive settings, or which trace the influence of geographical and geological sciences in literary productions, this study argues for the dynamic role in literature of presumably rigid mineral structures.
In German-language fiction after 1800, the counter-intuitive topology of rocky mountain ranges and unfathomable subterranean depths of the Alpine imaginary functions as a space of exception which appears to reconfirm and radically challenge the foundations of Enlightenment thought. Writing the Mountains reads the mountain range as a rigid yet permeable liminal space. Within this zone, semiotic orders are unsettled, as is the division between organic and inorganic, between the human and the other.
In German-language fiction after 1800, the counter-intuitive topology of rocky mountain ranges and unfathomable subterranean depths of the Alpine imaginary functions as a space of exception which appears to reconfirm and radically challenge the foundations of Enlightenment thought. Writing the Mountains reads the mountain range as a rigid yet permeable liminal space. Within this zone, semiotic orders are unsettled, as is the division between organic and inorganic, between the human and the other.
Reviews / Votes
Jens Klenner's ambitious, historically sweeping study of German mountain literature takes its reader from the Kantian sublime to contemporary ideas of mountain immateriality, digging into some challenging and complex literary expressions of mountains along the way * H-Net Reviews *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
271 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-7651-0651-8 (9798765106518)
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
05/2024
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€32.99
Available for download
E-Book
05/2024
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€32.99
Available for download
Persons
Jens Klenner is Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College, USA, and a Fellow of the German Studies Association. He has written extensively on German studies and philosophy, with one of his most recent works being the edited journal, Sprache und Rache (2019, co-edited with Juliane Prade-Weiss).
Content
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
1. Mountains Transformed-Towards an Alpine Aesthetic
1779-No Human Eye Could Do it Justice
Mountains at Rest? Kant and the Sublime
Georg Simmel and The Resistance of Mountains
Shifting Forms
2. Figures from Mines-E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Die Bergwerke zu Falun"
1720-Summer
Source Material
An Aesthetic Existence
A Task for Poets
An Empty Cipher
Inversion, Transformations, Transitions
3. Lost in the Mountains-Perspective and Displacement in Georg Buechner's Lenz
Arrivals
Windows to the World
Return to the Mountains
A Lethal Gaze
Medusa in the Mountains
4. Folded Mountains-Paul Celan's "Gespraech im Gebirg"
Mountains Vanished
August 1959-Reading Leibniz
Leaving for the Mountains
Wordscapes
The Folded Eye
5. Liquid Mountains-Elfriede Jelinek's Die Kinder der Toten
Mountain Graves
Historical Matters
Into the Mountains
Metamorphoses-Die Murie. Die Furie
Coda
Mountains Immaterial
Bibliography
Index
Note on Translation
1. Mountains Transformed-Towards an Alpine Aesthetic
1779-No Human Eye Could Do it Justice
Mountains at Rest? Kant and the Sublime
Georg Simmel and The Resistance of Mountains
Shifting Forms
2. Figures from Mines-E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Die Bergwerke zu Falun"
1720-Summer
Source Material
An Aesthetic Existence
A Task for Poets
An Empty Cipher
Inversion, Transformations, Transitions
3. Lost in the Mountains-Perspective and Displacement in Georg Buechner's Lenz
Arrivals
Windows to the World
Return to the Mountains
A Lethal Gaze
Medusa in the Mountains
4. Folded Mountains-Paul Celan's "Gespraech im Gebirg"
Mountains Vanished
August 1959-Reading Leibniz
Leaving for the Mountains
Wordscapes
The Folded Eye
5. Liquid Mountains-Elfriede Jelinek's Die Kinder der Toten
Mountain Graves
Historical Matters
Into the Mountains
Metamorphoses-Die Murie. Die Furie
Coda
Mountains Immaterial
Bibliography
Index