The Department of German is organising a research symposium seeking to reappraise the contribution of the 19th century German-language short prose narrative to European literature, culture and thought.
At a time when the realist novel was emerging in other European traditions as the defining genre of the century, the short narrative remained the dominant prose fiction form in German. The possibilities it offered attracted an astonishing range of authors. Against the background of the Romantic Kunstmärchen, the stories of Kleist, and above all Goethe’s shorter prose works, the short narrative was practised by most major names of the nineteenth-century German-language canon from around 1830 onward: Büchner, Droste, Keller, Mörike, Grillparzer, Stifter, Storm and Hauptmann are among the most significant, while other, less widely discussed figures such as Hebbel, Raabe, Ebner-Eschenbach, Saar and Andreas-Salomé populate the margins in intriguing ways. The significance of the form is also demonstrated by its successors in a later era, notably in the earlier work of Thomas Mann and Arthur Schnitzler.
The event will be held at the Cathedral Lodge, Canterbury Cathedral from 23-24 June 2014, with several guest speakers including a keynote address from Judith Ryan (University of Harvard) entitled ‘Shifting Grounds: Reality Effects in Stifter, Raabe and Sebald’.
Further information and details of how to book are available at: www.kent.ac.uk/secl/german/events