2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Aesthetic Perspectives of Travel-Essays in German Speaking Literature
| Project/Area Number |
19K00501
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Metropolitan University |
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Principal Investigator |
シュレンドルフ レオポルト 東京都立大学, 人文科学研究科, 准教授 (20773188)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
山本 浩司 早稲田大学, 文学学術院, 教授 (80267442)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Handke* / Travel / Essay / Narratology / Crisis / War / Kracht / Brinkmann |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In 2022, we particularly examined the travel texts of Thomas Glavinic, Christian Kracht, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Peter Handke. Their narratological concepts can be understood as an aesthetic alternative to easily readable travel journals and travel reports and their traditional aesthetics. In contrast, an innovative combination of elements from autofictions and travelogues plays a key role in the narrative strategy of contemporary travel texts. In order to overcome the traditional forms of writing about travel, a softening of the boundaries between the text types of (fictional) narration, essay and photo report is particularly characteristic.
The authors of the examined texts use their narrations and essays furthermore for political and media criticism. Under these conditions, the traveling writer not only finds himself in the role of observer and chronicler, but also in that of the critic of assumptions and realities produced by the media. Especially Literature Nobel Prize laureate (2019) Peter Handke, a dissenting voice to the "journalistic representation monopoly of the war (in Yugoslavia)" (Karl Wagner 2010), uses his journeys as the basis for a comprehensive media critic. A key finding is Handke's critic of the practice of "mapping" as an instrument of institutional power in the context of his journey into the crisis-afflicted region of Kosovo.
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