University of Wisconsin Madison crest that links to main university site

Association of University Presses member logo that links to main AUPresses site

   

Monatshefte

Subscribe

Read the Journal Online

Submission Guidelines

Editorial Board

Receive Email Updates

Advertise in Monatshefte

Indexes/Abstracts

 

Current Issue TOC

Back Issues TOC



Monatshefte 2022 Subscription Rates
Institutions:
      print & online $271
      online only $233
Individuals:
      print & online $103
      online only $86

Non U.S. Postage (no postage charges for online-only subscriptions)

Airmail: add $40/yr.

Canadian Subscribers: add 5% GST.

Monatshefte

Volume 108, Number 4, Winter 2016 Table of Contents

ARTICLES

Michael Saman

A Discourse of a Different Kind: On Fabulation and Method in Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten

This article brings nuance to our understanding of the way the narrative form and discursive strategies of Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten form a direct response to political and philosophical discourses of its time. Serialized in Die Horen, and arising from close collaboration with Schiller, the perplexing structure of the work is the result of Goethe’s experimental and ironic transposition into narrative fiction of Schiller’s programmatic aesthetic ideas for the journal. This article explores the contours of Goethe’s keen yet decidedly skeptical reckoning with contemporary philosophical constructions of history, and with theoretical attempts to grapple conceptually with developments in post-Revolutionary France.

Bryan Klausmeyer

Fragmenting Fragments: Jean Paul’s Poetics of the Small in “Meine Miszellen”

While Jean Paul is often associated with notoriously long, digressive novels, this article makes the case for the reading of Jean Paul above all as an author of the small. By taking the example of his minor work “Meine Miszellen,” the article examines how his reference to the discursive-literary tradition of 19th-century romantic miscellanies serves as an experimental testing ground for his poetics and epistemology of the small, as encapsulated by his concept of humor as the “inverted sublime.” From there the article seeks to distinguish Jean Paul’s poetics of the small from the romantic fragment by demonstrating how humor, in contrast to irony, serves as a material strategy for reflecting on the fragmentary character of his texts. The article ends by suggesting that Jean Paul’s emphasis on the small and fragmentary is not restricted to his fleeting minor works, but extends to later novels like Leben Fibels.

Julia Feldhaus

Not without My Mommy: The New Woman’s Mother Figure in Irmgard Keun’s Novels Gilgi – eine von uns (1931) and Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932)

This study puts forward the theory that the most significant influence on the New Woman’s success and the direction she chooses in life is her relationship with her mother. While scholars typically consider political and socioeconomic factors, and especially the media phenomenon of the era, when setting out to explain the emergence of the New Woman, this essay will demonstrate—via an analysis of Irmgard Keun’s novels Gilgi – eine von uns (1931) and Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932)—that the New Woman seeks to understand her mother’s position and the decisions she has made in life to better guide her own.

Katherine Arens

Hannah Arendt Translates Culture: Men in Dark Times

This article takes up Hannah Arendt’s Men in Dark Times (1968) as a strategic document aimed at restoring for an international audience a German-language tradition of thought that was unavailable in postwar West Germany because of cultural politics. In so doing, she not only exemplifies her version of Existenzphilosophie, but also claims German-Jewish thought as central to the German traditions.

 

REVIEW ARTICLE

Monika Schmitz-Emans
Literarische Bienen aus drei Jahrhunderten – Literaturwissenschaftliche Fallstudien zu Poetiken und Praktiken des Sammelns

(Häntzschel, Günter, Sammel(l)ei(denschaft). Literarisches Sammeln im 19. Jahrhundert, 2014.—Stadler, Ulrich und Magnus Wieland, Gesammelte Welten. Von Virtuosen und Zettelpoeten, 2014.—Décultot, Elisabeth, Hrsg., Lesen, Kopieren, Schreiben. Lese- und Exzerpierkunst in der europäischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts, 2014.)

PERSONALIA

Introduction, German Departments in the U.S.A., German Departments in Canada, Promotions, New Appointments, Visitors, Retirements, Necrology, Doctoral Dissertations, Summary

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Arens, Katherine, Vienna’s Dreams of Europe: Culture and Identity beyond the Nation-State (William M. Johnston)
Benthien, Claudia und Brigitte Weingart, Hrsg., Handbuch Literatur & Visuelle Kultur (Rüdiger Singer)
Bergengruen, Maximilian, Gideon Haut und Stephanie Langer, Hrsg., Tötungsarten und Ermittlungspraktiken. Zum literarischen und kriminalistischen Wissen von Mord und Detektion (Thomas W. Kniesche)
Besch, Werner, Luther und die deutsche Sprache. 500 Jahre deutsche Sprachgeschichte im Lichte der neueren Forschung (Mark L. Louden)
Binczek, Natalie und Cornelia Epping-Jäger, Hrsg., Das Diktat. Phono-graphische Verfahren der Aufschreibung (Tyler Whitney)
Calzoni, Raul Peter Kofler und Valentina Savietto, Hrsg., Intermedialität – Multimedialität. Literatur und Musik in Deutschland von 1900 bis heute (Rolf J. Goebel)
Dünne, Jörg und Andreas Mahler, Hrsg., Handbuch Literatur & Raum (Monika Shafi)
Forrest, Tara, Realism as Protest: Kluge, Schlingensief, Haneke (Jack Davis)
Gołaszewski, Marcin, Magdalena Kardach und Leonore Krenzlin, Hrsg., Zwischen Innerer Emigration und Exil. Deutschsprachige Schriftsteller 1933–1945 (Paul Michael Lützeler)
Gustafson, Susan E., Goethe’s Families of the Heart (Marcus Bullock)
Hahn, Hans-Werner und Dirk Oschmann, Hrsg., Gustav Freytag (1816–1895). Literat – Publizist – Historiker (Jeffrey L. Sammons)
Huber, Simon, Orientierungsfahrten. Sowjetunion- und USA-Berichte der Weimarer Republik als Reflexionsmedium im Modernediskurs (Gregor Streim)
Jørgensen, Sven-Aage, Querdenker der Aufklärung. Studien zu Johann Georg Hamann (Staffan Bengtsson)
Kniesche, Thomas, Einführung in den Kriminalroman (Julia Karolle-Berg)
Kolbe, Uwe, Brecht. Rollenmodell eines Dichters (Stephen Brockmann)
Koser, Julie, Armed Ambiguity: Women Warriors in German Literature and Culture in the Age of Goethe (Gail K. Hart)
Kutch, Lynn M. and Todd Herzog, eds., Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction (Sonja Osterwalder)
Mecklenburg, Norbert, Goethe. Inter- und transkulturelle poetische Spiele (Charlotte Lee)
Schürmann, Uta, Komfortable Wüsten. Das Interieur in der Literatur des europäischen Realismus des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frederick Betz)
Schutjer, Karin, Goethe and Judaism: The Troubled Inheritance of Modern Literature (Martha B. Helfer)
Thielking, Sigrid und Jochen Vogt, Hrsg., unter Mitarbeit von Sarah Michaelis, ‘Beinahekrimis’ – Beinahe Krimis!? (Faye Stewart)
von Mücke, Dorothea E., The Practices of the Enlightenment: Aesthetics, Authorship, and the Public (John A. McCarthy)
Weineck, Silke-Maria, The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West (Eleanor ter Horst)
Zipes, Jack, Grimm Legacies: The Magic Spell of the Grimms’ Folk and Fairy Tales (Klaus L. Berghahn)

 

INDEX VOLUME 108 (2016)