Description
- Abstract:
- My dissertation is entitled “Nebeneinander, Miteinander, Querfeldein: Johann Peter Hebel—Walter Benjamin—W.G. Sebald.” and identifies the subversive and salvific potential in proliferating paratactic constructions in Johann Peter Hebel and how this approach was captured by Walter Benjamin and ultimately passed on to the literature of W.G. Sebald. I argue that Hebel destabilizes notions of the familiar and seemingly simple by breaking them up into incommensurable complexities. Hebel makes the inconceivable felt through his particular use of language, so that an ordinary oak tree, a bird’s nest, or one’s own home suddenly reveal their connection to the absolute excess of creation. Walter Benjamin calls Hebel’s specific mobilization of language “double talk,” which he defines as being incapable of speaking of the great and the small in any other way than as simultaneous and as deeply intertwined. The most promising approach to grasping the full impact of Hebel’s voice, Benjamin asserts, is to visualize the most saturated passages of his prose as an image. However, Benjamin sees the force of Hebel’s stories not only in their author’s use of language or their visual potential, but ultimately in their relationship to death. I further maintain that in his own works, Sebald, who is introduced to Hebel’s writings through Benjamin, adapts Hebel’s “double talk,” albeit fractured through Benjamin’s lens, in order to encourage a polyvocal reading. The multitude of voices allows the living and the dead to co-reside in his prose, most notably in those motifs that he inherits directly from Hebel, such as the pilgrim and the Rose of Jericho.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2016)
Access Conditions
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Restrictions on Use
- Collection is open for research.
Citation
Brand, Benjamin M. W.,
"Nebeneinander, Miteinander, Querfeldein: Johann Peter Hebel - Walter Benjamin - W.G. Sebald"
(2016).
German Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0RJ4GWC
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Collection:
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German Studies Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the German Studies department....