The fifteen essays cover the life and works of the major authors representing the generation who began their literary careers before Word War 2, were driven into exile or into inner emigration during the years of annexation (1938-1945), and attained full prominence in the post-war period.

The purpose of this projected seven-volume series is to help make the major figures of Austrian literature from 1800 to the present accessible to an English-speaking audience. The introductions provide an overview of the cultural and political background of the age to furnish a broader context for the individual contributions. Bibliographies of primary and secondary texts enhance the value of the volumes as reference works. This volume covers the turbulent period between the two world wars. Despite the hardships endured by a country recovering from a severe war, and despite the prominence of politics, literature flourished to a degree that, surprisingly perhaps, makes this era one of the richest periods in Austrian literary history.

This volume covers the turbulent period between the two world wars. Despite the hardships endured by a country recovering from a severe war, and despite the prominence of politics, literature flourished to a degree that, surprisingly perhaps, makes this era one of the richest periods in Austrian literary history.

This volume presents fifteen of the leading authors of the Austrian nineteenth century. A comprehensive introduction provides the historical and literary background as a context for the essays on the individual writers. Special attention is paid to the definition of Biedermeier, to the attitudes toward women, and to the question of the autonomy of Austrian literature.Authors discussed are: Ludwig Anzengruber, Eduard Bauernfeld, Jakob Julius David, Karl Emil Franzos, Franz Grillparzer, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Ferdinand Kurnberger, Nikolaus Lenau, Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, Betty Paoli, Caroline Pichler, Ferdinand Raimund, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Charles Sealsfield, Adalbert Stifter.

New essays examine 20th-c. Austrian literature in relation to history, politics, and popular culture. 20th-century Austrian literature boasts many outstanding writers: Schnitzler, Musil, Rilke, Kraus, Celan, Canetti, Bernhard, Jelinek. These and others feature in broader accounts of German literature, but it is desirable to see how the Austrian literary scene -- and Austrian society itself -- shaped their writing. This volume thus surveys Austrian writers of drama, prose fiction, and lyric poetry; relates them to the distinctive history of modern Austria, a democratic republic that was overtaken by civil war and authoritarian rule, absorbed into Nazi Germany, and re-established as a neutral state; and examines their response to controversial events such as the collusion with Nazism, the Waldheim affair, and the rise of Haider and the extreme right. In addition to confronting controversy in the relations between literature, history, and politics, the volume examines popular culture in line with current trends. Contributors: Judith Beniston, Janet Stewart, Andrew Barker, Murray Hall, Anthony Bushell, Dagmar Lorenz, Juliane Vogel, Jonathan Long, Joseph McVeigh, Allyson Fiddler. Katrin Kohl is Lecturer in German and a Fellow of Jesus College, and Ritchie Robertson is Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature and a Fellow of The Queen's College, both at the University of Oxford.

In response to the silence that continues to shroud Austria’s historical past, Austrian literature after 1950 wants to retrace an untold history that left its marks in mental schemata and cultural clichés. The question how literature can refer to the facts silenced by a political unconscious, the question of literary reference and reality description, lies at the core of Austrian literature since the 1950’s. This book traces the development of contemporary Austrian fiction from the 1950s to the 1990s, showing how the Vienna Group’s literary reductionism led to gesture of mere pointing in happening and performance. While strongly indebted to the experimental techniques of the Vienna Group, later Austrian authors such as Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Peter Rosei, and Gerhard Roth employ literary forms and extra-literary media prone to the indexical in an attempt to cut through the net of linguistic and cultural clichés, alluding to the microfascisms latent in common percepts, and indexing a reality that eludes plain description.