Austria Lit after Great War

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Austrian Literature after the Great War Much of the attention that Austrian literature and culture has received has been focused on the grand fin-de-siècle burst of creative output from writers, architects, painters, scientist, and philosophers. Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal, Wagner, Klimt, Freud, and Wittgenstein are some of the illustrious names that time evokes. What is often forgotten in nostalgic views of that Viennese culture is the fact that many of these creative minds produced many of their works not before, but after the First World War which devastated the Habsburg Empire much more than the German Reich. While practically no warfare had occurred on German soil, the Habsburg Empire was sliced apart and reduced to an economically gutted and politically miniaturized version of its previous self. In this course, students will read texts of some of the great writers of the time against the backdrop of this devastation. Schnitzler, Kraus, Broch, Kafka, Veza Canetti, Hofmannsthal, Roth, Bettauer, Horvarth, Werfel, Zweig, and Musil all published significant parts of their works during this time. Reading these authors should be freed from always referencing the fin-de-siécle. Especially in the US, there is a tendency to think of Viennese culture in a sentimentalized way, promoted in part by such books as Carl E. Schorske’s Fin-de Siècle Vienna (1979). Focusing on the post-war context, this seminar will highlight the conflictual nature of much of the literary works and how they try to address the ruptures of the First World War experiences and its aftermath. There will be occasions to hone language skills by writing descriptive and interpretive essays (in a process-writing, multi-draft manner) and formal spoken German through structured oral presentations. We will also be able to specifically address vocabulary building through different levels of work with semantic fields.