Volume 55, Issue 1

In Macbeth (ca. 1606), William Shakespeare returns all the way back to his metaphysics which he had demonstrated magnificently in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ca. 1595) and Hamlet (ca. 1600). These works represent Shakespeare’s dramaturgical treatment of Being, substance, essence, etc. One of the chief elements of these plays is supernaturality, or nothingness (non-being) in a sense interrupting Being and human activities. These elements are presented in Julius Caesar (1599) as well, a history play which has commonalities with Macbeth . Yet few of his tragedies offer a world so dipped in horror and darkness as Macbeth . Ethics might thus be a far-fetched component among these grisly sensations and in the bloody atmosphere of this tragedy, but with the help of Emmanuel Lévinas (1906–1995), traces of ethical exigency can be discerned. Approaching Macbeth through Lévinas’s philosophy, we attempt to study some ways in which ethics can be addressed and studied in this dark world. We will discuss Macbeth’s struggles with time (mostly his future) and the Other as metaphors of alterity intruding into and interrupting his totalizing conatus.

Heinrich von Kleist’s attitude toward the Catholic Church has produced two major positions in modern German literature. On one hand, there are those who understand Kleist simply as a church critic; on the other hand, there are those who consider Kleist’s attitude – and his alleged Kantian crisis and departure from all scholars – as supportive towards the Church. Die heilige Cäcilie precisely exemplifies this debate, because, depending on the way one reads the narrative, the text can be interpreted as an endorsement or as a criticism of the Church. However, the text can be read quite differently for yet, a third, alternative understanding: the element of music involved in Die heilige Cäcilie undermines a concrete definition of its position as well as a concrete statement regarding Kleist’s religious creed. Thereby, it serves as a tool to help the reader to make decisions in terms of religious beliefs and doctrines.

The relationship between the idyll and narration has a paradoxical nature: In its state of complete harmony, the idyll is beyond any change or development. In terms of narration, however, this poses a fundamental difficulty. This was a problem already recognized in Schiller’s reflections on the idyll in the context of the philosophy of history, expounded in his essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry ( Über naive und sentimentale Dichtung ). By depicting a golden age, i. e., a state that can only ever be appreciated in retrospect, the idyll, according to Schiller, inspires, above all, the pursuit of such a state of harmony in the present. In identification of the idyllic consciousness, representation can only take the form of endangerment by external threats, and in certain cases, the successful overcoming of these threats. Conversely, it is only possible to show the idyll as a state not yet realized, still to be pursued from a perspective outside of the idyllic consciousness. Consequently, the device of a distant, masterful narrator is instrumental to the nuanced depiction of both Prague’s Lesser Quarter (Malá Strana or Kleinseite) in Jan Neruda’s eponymous tales and the Oblomovka country estate in Ivan Gončarov’s novel Oblomov . In both instances, the narrative allows for a critique of the premature realization of pseudo-idyll. Furthermore, the idyll is put into perspective so that beyond signifying loss, its potential to inspire visions of the future is summoned.

The debate on the ‘where’ of the Balkans seem to be stuck between national paradigms and a nostalgia for cosmopolitanism. This essay explores an alternative spatial mapping of the region, opening it up to the wider Eastern-Mediterranean, in particular the fuzzy and contested notion of the Levant. First, it looks into various instances of ‘the Levant’ and ‘the Levantine,’ ranging from Turkish and Greek to Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian examples – with a particular focus on the latter. Secondly, by then ‘levantinizing’ the Balkans, in an explicit analogy to Édouard Glissant’s understanding of ‘creolization’ in the Caribbean, it attempts to draw the outlines of a geography of encounters. Finally, it offers a sample of what such a geography might look like and what its literary-historical repercussions might be, bringing together the work of Semezdin Mehmedinović and Etel Adnan.

In its peritext, Thomas Mann’s Entstehung des Doktor Faustus is described as a “Roman eines Romans”. The essay reasons that this description of its genre as well as structural aspects of its composition mark it as an autobiographical text. Instead of following most studies on the Doktor Faustus , which regard the Entstehung simply as a documentary source for exposing autobiographical intricacies of Mann’s novel, textual evidence for the Entstehung ’s autonomy is given. The analysis focuses first on the structural frame of the Entstehung in order to show Mann’s central techniques of autobiographical self-stylization. In this context auto-fictional elements can also be identified. Exemplary passages from two longer sections are taken into account based on these findings. While the Doktor Faustus is a recurrent topic in these passages, it is not, by any means, the only one. Combined with varying autobiographical writing techniques, the Entstehung is thus displaying continuous independence from the Faustus . Based on these insights, future Mann studies on both works may reevaluate the role of the Entstehung for the reception of the Faustus and the status of autobiographical literature in the works of Thomas Mann.

The paper investigates a specific period in the history of unreliable narration, or, more precisely, of its mimetic variation that is based on ontological misinformation. Using the example of three German-language literary texts of classical modernism, the functions and conditions of success of the literary device in question are analyzed. A comparison of the interpretation of reality offered by the texts allows for the construction of a cultural-historical tendency of development; however, the examined texts seem to position themselves chronologically in a retrograde manner to that tendency. Reasons for this paradox are explained in regards to the – particularly political – functionalization of the myth in classical modernism. The analysis of the requirements for a successful deception of the recipient is based on three narratological criteria. An examination of how these criteria are (or are not) met in the chosen texts reveals a need for more terminological refinement and additionally inspires a fundamental reinterpretation of one of the case examples.

David Mamet is often considered as the quintessential dramatist of American urban life whose stage is peopled exclusively, and at times questionably, with men. Glengarry Glen Ross is the outstanding epitome of Mamet’s avid engagement with the world of men and their primordial, instinctive thirst for dominance, authority, and the celebration of their masculine prowess. Exploring the turbulent dynamics of male interactions determined and affected by contemporary capitalism, the present study investigates the disturbed depiction of masculinity and male bonding. Mainstream masculinity has been fundamentally linked to power and organized for domination. Historically changing and politically fraught, masculinity is the product of social learning or socialization. Rather than a celebration of the camaraderie of men, as most criticisms of Mamet focus upon, it is argued that the play highlights the failure of such fellowship and the tragic consequences. In Mamet, capitalism and the market economy do to men what in a patriarchal system men do to women: marginalize, dominate, displace. Men, therefore, are losing their cultural centrality, and with that, their capacity for constructive male bonds. Glengarry Glen Ross faithfully captures the sad ethos of American capitalism. The dynamics of dominance and success, the exercise of power, and the hierarchies of control lead to a dysfunctional network of male connections and interactions. Men are expected to develop more instrumentally functioning abilities and roles while maintaining the more expressively dominant roles they used to possess. Caught in between, they are only subject to alienation. This is the paradox of contemporary American men.