Orienting the Self
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€107.99
A01=Debra N. Prager
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Author_Debra N. Prager
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSB
COP=United States
Debra N. Prager
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Eastern subject
Effi Briest
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Europe's eastward gaze
Fortunatus
German literary tradition
German literature
Heinrich von Ofterdingen
Language_English
literary device
Orient
Oriental
PA=Available
Parzival
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
subjectivity
The Magic Mountain
Washington and Lee University.
wholeness
Product details
- ISBN 9781571135940
- Weight: 646g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2014
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Follows the evolution of the Orient as a positive literary device in German literature and demonstrates how it was used to explore subjectivity and the possibility of wholeness.
For centuries, Europe's eastward gaze has been wary if not hostile. Medieval man envisaged grotesque beings at the world's edge and scanned the steppes and straits on the immediate horizon for the Asian or Arab hordes that might swarm across them. Through the Crusades, the early modern era, and the age of imperialism, Europeans regarded the Eastern subject as requiring both "discovery" and conquest. Conveniently, the "Oriental" came to represent fanaticism, terrorism, moral laxity, and inscrutability, among other stereotypes. The list of German literary works that reinforced negative clichés about the East is long, but Orienting the Self argues for the presence in the Germanliterary tradition of a powerful perception of the East as the scene of desire, fantasy, and fulfillment. It follows the evolution of the Orient as a literary device and demonstrates how it was used to explore subjectivity and the possibility of wholeness. The five works treated in this study - Parzival, Fortunatus, Effi Briest, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and The Magic Mountain - are narratives of development in which the encounter with the East is central to the progression toward selfhood and the promise of fulfillment.
Debra N. Prager is Associate Professor of German at Washington and Lee University.
