Christa Wolf: A Companion

Description

Interest in Christa Wolf continues to grow. Her classics are being reprinted and new titles are appearing posthumously, becoming bestsellers, and being translated. Energetic scholarly debates engage well-known aesthetic and political issues that the public intellectual herself fore-fronted. This broad-ranging introduction to the author, her work and times builds upon and moves beyond such foundational interpretative frameworks by articulating the global relevance of Wolf’s oeuvre today, also for non-German readers. Thus, it brings East German culture alive to students, teachers, scholars and the general public by connecting the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the lived experiences of its citizens to nations and cultures around the world. The collection focuses on topical matters including the search for authenticity, agency, race, cosmopolitanism, gender, environmentalism, geopolitics, war, and memory debates, as well as movie adaptations and Wolf’s film work with DEFA, marketing, and international reception. Our contributions – by senior and emerging scholars from across the globe – emphasize Wolf’s position as an author of world literature and an important critical voice in the 21st century. Table of Contents A Note on Translations Introduction: Reading Christa Wolf in the Twenty-First Century Modernity and the City in Christa Wolf’s Oeuvre of the 1960s Narrative Topographies in Christa Wolf’s Oeuvre The Gendered Reception of Christa Wolf Unearthing a Post-Humanist Ecological Socialism in Christa Wolf’s ‘Selbstversuch’, Kassandra and Störfall Nature, Power and Literature: Rereading Christa Wolf’s Störfall. Nachrichten eines Tages as ‘Ecological Force’ in Times of Climate Crisis Literature and Visual Art in Christa Wolf’s Sommerstück (1989) and Was bleibt (1990) Learning from the Underground: Christa Wolf and the Fourth Generation of GDR Writers From Pan-German Cosmopolitanism to Nostalgic National Insularity: A Comparative Study of Christa Wolf’s Kassandra and Medea Christa Wolf’s Trouble with Race Towards a Late Style? Christa Wolf on Old Age, Death and Creativity in Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud The Protocol of Barriers to Thinking? Wolf’s Moskauer Tagebücher. Wer wir sind und wer wir waren (2014) Translating Subjective Authenticity from Christa T. to Stadt der Engel and August: Re-presenting Christa Wolf’s Subaltern Voice From Political-Realistic Reading to Multiperspectival Understanding: The Reception of Christa Wolf’s Der geteilte Himmel in China Reading Christa Wolf in Socialist Vietnam Christa Wolf: A Select Bibliography Contributors Index