New Ways in Germanistik

Richard Sheppard

• From "Being-Itself" to "Post-Modernism" - four decades of literature and literary criticism in the Federal Republic of Germany, Helmut Kreuzer; the unacknowledged legislator of the text - some observations on literary criticism in the Federal Republic of Germany, Hans J.Hahn; towards a systematic outline of an integrative theory of literary history, Michael Titzmann; the reception of sociological theory by West German literary scholarship 1970-85, J rg Sch nert; Hans Robert Jauss's "Rezeptions sthetik" - theory and application, Margot Zutshi; a feminist approach to Kafka's "The Castle", Elizabeth Boa; women writing about women writing and Ingeborg Bachmann's "Malina"; the politics of literature in the GDR - a post-structuralist approach, Chris Weedon; unholy families - the Oedipal psychopathology of four expressionist "Ich-Dramen", Richard Sheppard; deconstructing classicism - Goethe's "Helena" and the need to rhyme, Anthony Phelan; the poetry of August Stramm - a suitable case for deconstruction, Richard Sheppard; the potential and limits of a Marxist methodology for "Germanistik", David Jenkinson; from Althusser to Brecht - formalism, materialism, and "The Threepenny Opera", Steve Giles; upstairs - downstairs - some reflections on German literature in the light of Bakhtin's Theory of Carnival, Richard Sheppard.

'as entertaining as it is informative, as convincing as it is bound to provoke contradiction.' German, Austrian and Swiss Affairs