| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In the 90's the 20. Century published texts of younger authors from the earlier GDR (East Germany) such as Wolfgang Hilbig and Reinhardt Jirgl show clear tendency towards the disgusting. In them signs of decay of all kinds are described with extreme intensity, whereas the social life is represented as something hollow and illusory. These authors thereby take up again the aesthetics of the ugly since Baudelaire which was neglected during the socialist age ; on the other hand, however, they are skeptical about the avant-gardism of the modern arts. The actuality of such discourse on the disgust in the "post-GDR literature" can be illustrated by comparison with two significant authors from east and west : Heiner Muller and Botho Strauss.
In the earlier texts of Heiner Muller, at first sight inhuman, frightening experiences of the state of emergency are positively understood and shaped as a moment of a revolutionary change. It is due to the intensity of the physical experience of the fright that Heiner Muller had a far stronger influence on younger authors than other idealistic authors of the GDR. But, at the same time, it is also the reason for the generation difference, for the physical experience of the disgust which marks the younger authors is just in the foreground when the fright is accompanied by no more revolutionary expectation.
Botho Strauss' texts are written under post-modern conditions of West Germany. Nevertheless, they have in two respects common characteristics with Hilbig's and Jirgl's texts which are arisen from another cultural context : first insomuch as they try to shake the superficial representation system of the media society by causing immediate physical experiences of the mythical fright in the reader ; secondly, however, in the skepticism with which they reflect themselves the effectiveness of such attempts ironically.
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