The Poetics of Passage: Christa Wolf, Time, and Narrative

Following German writer Christa Wolfs death in December 2011, the scholarly interest that her work had generated over four decades now culminates in the question of her literary and cultural legacy. Throughout her long writing career, Christa Wolf often pointed to generational differences, and asked questions about historical experiences specific to the periods contemporaries. The Poetics of Passage discusses the experience of time and history, and their representation as two of the late authors guiding concerns. Considering Wolfs critiques of Anna Seghers work, Heike Polster develops a framework for understanding the poetic construction of time in Wolfs texts. Furthermore, the writers critical engagement with memory, history, and the writing process is formulated into a poetics of contemporaneity, or Zeitgenossenschaft, that Polsters study outlines as Wolfs poetological response to the ontological questions of times passage. See more