The Spiritual Meaning of Material Things in the Novels of Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868): A Study in Poetic Realism by Pamela S. Saur (review)

At the center of Pamela S. Saur's monograph on the Austrian author Adalbert Stifter is an interest in "the complex ways in which abstract virtues, ideals, and spiritual elements coexist with the concrete world of the earth, substances, and things" (5). Contemporary literary history acknowledges a strong attempt at balance in the works of German Realism, which was frequently referred to as "Idealrealismus" by Stifter's contemporaries. Indeed, Stifter is progressively understood by literary scholars as an author who epitomizes a sense of balance. Saur rejects the outdated charge that Stifter was preoccupied with a simple description of the material world by showing how his representations of material objects are typically saturated with social significance.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, "Interactions with the Material," explores the material objects in which Stifter's characters come into contact. Although Saur, to a great extent, yields a basic checklist of personal belongings, she also emphasizes the cultural context of material items, although the examples she provides are not always connected in any meaningful way. Chapter 1, "Ownership of Possessions," for example, discusses the items (furniture, books) that are found within a bourgeois home, and she specifically attributes these possessions to the particular virtues of Biedermeier Austria. She also locates the value of such possessions in the continuity of generations, another important theme of nineteenth-century realist literature. In chapter 3, "Giving and Receiving Gifts," Saur introduces the anthropological representations of gift giving as a social custom. She attributes various gifts to corresponding circumstances, such as marriage or victories in battle, yet she does not typically offer much insight into the social practices themselves. As a result, analyses remain predominantly internal to the texts that she introduces.

In the second part of the book, "Meanings of the Material," Saur shifts mostly toward natural objects: stones (chapter 5), as well as jewels and pearls (chapter 6). These chapters are rightly distinguished from the manmade objects explored in the first part of the book, yet the author does not emphasize this distinction. Rather, she claims quite generally to "address the meanings of substances given particular, even fundamental, significance" (7). With regard to stones, she underscores Stifter's personal interest in geology, contextualizing it within a growing public interest in such fields. This chapter also allows the author to focus on multiple stories from Stifter's Bunte Steine collection. Due to this centrality, this chapter would act as a valuable source for students seeking a general introduction to this popular collection of stories.

In general, Saur's analyses would be beneficial to undergraduate students and general readers seeking a survey of Adalbert Stifter, first because she gives particular attention to his well-known works, namely Der Nachsommer, Witiko, and Bunte Steine. Second, Saur's cataloguing provides initial access to Stifter's masterly descriptive realism but also importantly indicates the complex cultural contexts that inform his material representations. Furthermore, the book reads easily, and as it evades theory altogether, it also avoids heavy jargon. Her frequent return to the concepts of Biedermeier and Bildung maintains for the general reader a focused encounter with Stifter's texts.

Saur's inquiry into Stifter would have benefited from a more explicit exposition of the cultural contexts specific to his various works. Relatedly, the study would also have benefited from a deeper engagement with secondary literature. She points toward some of this literature in the "Selected Secondary Literature" section at the end of the book but does not engage directly with much of this scholarship in her analyses. Additionally, the book's subtitle, "A Study in Poetic Realism," is odd, because she does not actively take up the matter of Realism as a literary style or period. On the contrary, Saur emphasizes a general idealist tendency in Stifter's literary works. She restricts...