Inherited Traditions of Narrative Framing in W. G. Sebald'sDie Ausgewanderten

Abstract

In Die Ausgewanderten (1992), W. G. Sebald frames the act of storytelling in a way that draws on and reappropriates nineteenth‐century narrative traditions, in particular the frame constructions typical of the German Novelle with which Sebald was familiar. Sebald portrays his narrator not only as a storyteller, but also as a witness, collector of stories, and reader of documents. This is a framing technique already utilized in the nineteenth century, sometimes to assert believability and authenticity, but also to reveal ironically the ambiguity and fragility of seemingly authentic stories. By using photographs and a seemingly autobiographical style, Sebald follows in this tradition in order to represent twentieth‐century loss and tragedy, as well as to test the limits of this form of representation for life stories that revolve around death, loss, and the tension between capturing and erasing memory.