LE MIROIR BRISÉ: REASSESSING THE OCCUPATION (1940-44) IN NOVELS BY MODIANO, ASSOULINE AND ROZIER

Within French post-war society, the reassessment of the Second World War and the French collaboration with the national socialist occupants started comparatively late. According to  French historiographer Henry Rousso, France suffered from  ‘Vichy-Syndrome’ until the 1970s, when the suppressed past surged and brought about an obsessive focus on the period of the Occupation, that France hasn’t overcome until this day (Rousso/Conan 2013). Since the mid-1970s, the period of the Occupation has also increasingly been made a topic of fictional literature. Especially around the turn of the millennium is when many novels are published that discuss the time of the German occupation in France (1940-44). This article analyzes three novels that deconstruct the Gaullist myth of the France résistante and turn against the metaphor of the années noires. The novels Dora Bruder (Patrick Modiano, 1997), La cliente (Pierre Assouline, 1998) and Un amour sans résistance (Gilles Rozier, 2003) make the gaps in the official discourse of memory visible and highlight the shades of gray that lie between resistance and collaboration.Within French post-war society, the reassessment of the Second World War and the French collaboration with the national socialist occupants started comparatively late. According to  French historiographer Henry Rousso, France suffered from  ‘Vichy-Syndrome’ until the 1970s, when the suppressed past surged and brought about an obsessive focus on the period of the Occupation, that France hasn’t overcome until this day (Rousso/Conan 2013). Since the mid-1970s, the period of the Occupation has also increasingly been made a topic of fictional literature. Especially around the turn of the millennium is when many novels are published that discuss the time of the German occupation in France (1940-44). This article analyzes three novels that deconstruct the Gaullist myth of the France résistante and turn against the metaphor of the années noires. The novels Dora Bruder (Patrick Modiano, 1997), La cliente (Pierre Assouline, 1998) and Un amour sans résistance (Gilles Rozier, 2003) make the gaps in the official discourse of memory visible and highlight the shades of gray that lie between resistance and collaboration

Im Krieg Federn lassen: Vogel-Metaphern in zeitgenössischen Kriegsromanen (Khadra, Scheuer, Surminski, Rothmann)

Ausgehend von den Studien des „Zooromanisten“ Richard Riegler wird die Funktion von Vogelmetaphorik in Kriegsromanen näher beleuchtet. Dazu werden ein KZ-Roman (Arno Surminski, Die Vogelwelt von Auschwitz, 2008), ein Roman über die Ostfront im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Ralf Rothmann, Im Frühling sterben, 2015) und zwei Romane zum Afghanistan-Krieg (Yasmina Khadra, Les hirondelles de Kaboul, 2002 und Norbert Scheuer, Die Sprache der Vögel, 2015) auf ihre Vogel-Metaphorik untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die Vögel in den vier Romanen nicht nur der gängigen Deutung entsprechen (Hoffnung, Liebe, Freiheit), sondern gerade im Kontext von Krieg dazu dienen, unsagbares Grauen zu schildern, das sich der sprachlichen Benennung entzieht

Der ruinierte Körper. Petrarkistische Sonette in transkultureller Perspektive

La thèse examine des sonnets pétrarquisants du XVIe et XVIIe siècles qui partagent comme modèle le Canzoniere de Pétrarque. L’analyse des catégories de « corps » et « ruine » met en évidence – malgré les conflits politiques et sociaux de l’époque – l’échange culturel qui lie l’Italie, la France, l’Espagne et l’Angleterre. L’intégration de la poésie des ruines dans le modèle pétrarquien met en scène le corps ruiné. La première partie de la thèse (Körper/Corps : Theoretische Diskurse/Discours t..

From Phenomenological Self-Givenness to the Notion of Spiritual Freedom

In my paper, I want to focus not only on the notions of givenness and evidence in Husserl’s phenomenology, but also on phenomenological work “after” Husserl. I will elaborate on how these phenomenological key ideas can methodologically be made fruitful, especially for an investigation into religious phenomena. After giving an outline of Husserl’s notions of (self-)givenness, evidence, and original intuition (I), I want to portray key elements of Steinbock’s discovery of a generative dimension in Husserl’s phenomenology and show how this approach correlates to the field of religious experiences (II). Subsequently, I want to focus on Steinbock’s book Phenomenology of Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (2007), and elucidate how for Steinbock different historical examples of mystical experiences can serve as leading clues for the revelation of the essential, eidetic structures of “vertical experiences”—or, phenomenologically speaking, the eidos of religious experience, which turns out to be “epiphany” (III). The expression “verticality,” as opposed to “horizontality,” denotes the existential and dynamic dimension of experiences which are oriented toward a new height (religiously or morally) “beyond” ourselves

Le miroir brisé: reassessing the occupation (1940-44) in novels by Modiano, Assouline and Rozier

Within French post-war society, the reassessment of the Second World War and the French collaboration with the national socialist occupants started comparatively late. According to French historiographer Henry Rousso, France suffered from ‘Vichy-Syndrome’ until the 1970s, when the suppressed past surged and brought about an obsessive focus on the period of the Occupation, that France hasn’t overcome until this day (Rousso/Conan 2013). Since the mid-1970s, the period of the Occupation has also increasingly been made a topic of fictional literature. Especially around the turn of the millennium is when many novels are published that discuss the time of the German occupation in France (1940-44). This article analyzes three novels that deconstruct the Gaullist myth of the France résistante and turn against the metaphor of the années noires. The novels Dora Bruder (Patrick Modiano, 1997), La cliente (Pierre Assouline, 1998) and Un amour sans résistance (Gilles Rozier, 2003) make the gaps in the official discourse of memory visible and highlight the shades of gray that lie between resistance and collaboration

Le miroir brisé: Reassessing the occupation (1940-44) in novels by Modiano, Assouline and Rozier

Within French post-war society, the reassessment of the Second World War and the French collaboration with the national socialist occupants started comparatively late. According to  French historiographer Henry Rousso, France suffered from  ‘Vichy-Syndrome’ until the 1970s, when the suppressed past surged and brought about an obsessive focus on the period of the Occupation, that France hasn’t overcome until this day (Rousso/Conan 2013). Since the mid-1970s, the period of the Occupation has also increasingly been made a topic of fictional literature. Especially around the turn of the millennium is when many novels are published that discuss the time of the German occupation in France (1940-44). This article analyzes three novels that deconstruct the Gaullist myth of the France résistante and turn against the metaphor of the années noires. The novels Dora Bruder (Patrick Modiano, 1997), La cliente (Pierre Assouline, 1998) and Un amour sans résistance (Gilles Rozier, 2003) make the gaps in the official discourse of memory visible and highlight the shades of gray that lie between resistance and collaboration

Der ruinierte Körper. Petrarkistische Sonette in transkultureller Perspektive

La thèse examine des sonnets pétrarquisants du XVIe et XVIIe siècles qui partagent comme modèle le Canzoniere de Pétrarque. L’analyse des catégories de « corps » et « ruine » met en évidence – malgré les conflits politiques et sociaux de l’époque – l’échange culturel qui lie l’Italie, la France, l’Espagne et l’Angleterre. L’intégration de la poésie des ruines dans le modèle pétrarquien met en scène le corps ruiné. La première partie de la thèse (Körper/Corps : Theoretische Diskurse/Discours t..