The German Epic in the Cold War

Matthew Millers The German Epic in the Cold War explores the literary evolution of the modern epic in postwar German literature. Examining works by Peter Weiss, Uwe Johnson, and Alexander Kluge, it illustrates imaginative artistic responses in German fiction to the physical and ideological division of postWorld War II Germany. Miller analyzes three ambitious German-language epics from the second half of the twentieth century: Weisss Die sthetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance), Johnsons Jahrestage (Anniversaries), and Kluges Chronik der Gefhle (Chronicle of Feelings). In them, he traces the epics unlikely reemergence after the catastrophes of World War II and the Shoah and its continuity across the historical watershed of 198991, defined by German unification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Building on Franco Morettis codification of the literary form of the modern epic, Miller demonstrates the epics ability to understand the past; to come to terms with ethical, social, and political challenges in the second half of the twentieth century in German-speaking Europe and beyond; and to debate and envision possible futures.