Dr Heide Kunzelmann, from the Department of German, has just published a new book entitled »ich bin ja der Proteus« – H.C. Artmanns Poetik der Wandelbarkeit (Sonderzahl, 2013).
The book concerns the Austrian Avantgardist Hans Carl Artmann (1921-2000) is known for his poetics of masquerade, which uses language to alter the authorial subject beyond recognition. The nature of Artmann’s narrator as an essentially metamorphic authorial subject is discussed in the light of Artmann’s own traumatic history and his profoundly destabilizing experiences as a deserter from the Wehrmacht, imprisoned on death row at the end of World War II. The book thus explores the ways in which the subject’s personal narrative is aestheticised through experimental writing.
Details about the book can be found on the publisher’s website here:
www.sonderzahl.at/_buecher.htm