The Cambridge History of German Literature

Watanabe-O'Kelly, Helen

doi:10.1017/chol9780521434171

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Cited by 17 publications

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German Novel

Kacandes¹

2010

The Encyclopedia of the Novel

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Goethe, Mann, Kafka, Canetti. The Sorrows of Young Werther, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Man Without Qualities, The Tin Drum . The novel is barely conceivable without the contribution of literature written in the German language, and yet, the German novel is rarely the focus in general histories of the genre (see history ). To be sure, the development of the German novel can be understood through many of the same categories that have been used to explain the Spanish, French, or English novel. There are German picaresque , epistolary , historical , realist (see realism ), modernist (see modernism ), postmodernist and even magical realist novels (see magical realism ). Explanations of these terms as well as histories of the novel in other European countries, particularly in France and England, would apply in great part to the German case. This entry, therefore, presents certain historical factors, in distinction to those countries, influencing the development of the German novel and points to central contributions of the German novel to world literature: Modernist experimentation, the processing of national trauma, and multiculturalism.

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