Foreign Correspondence: Recent German Studies in the ELT Period

407 FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE: RECENT GERMAN STUDIES IN THE ELT PERIOD By Werner Bies (Trier, West Germany) 1. General Studies While many recent German books focus on individual authors such as G. K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, and D. H. Lawrence, only four publications deal with the literature of the period in general and major movements like aestheticism and naturalism: Englische Literatur zwischen Viktorianismus und Moderne, edited by Paul Goetsch; Naturalismus in England 1880-1920, edited by Walter Greiner and Gerhard Stilz (both are Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983); Asthetizismus und Dekadenz. Zum Paradigmakonflikt in der englischen Literaturtheorie des spaten 19. Jahrhunderts (MUnchen : Fink, 1983), by Ulrich Horstmann; Die 'Nineties. Das englische Fin de siècle zwischen Dekadenz und Sozialkritik (München: Francke, 1983), edited by Manfred Pfister and Bernd Schulte-Middelich. Paul Goetsch offers a valuable collection of sixteen essays on English literature between Victorianism and Modernism (which includes Helmut E. Gerber's excellent essay, "The Nineties: Beginning, End, or Transition?"). The emphasis is on articles which stress the persistence and tenacity of Victorian views and conventions in early modern literature and deny the existence of definite barriers and violent ruptures between both ages. Thus the contributors discuss "Emergent Modernism in Late Victorian Fiction" (J. Gordon Eaker) or give reasons "why Conrad belongs more with the Victorians than with the moderns" (Charles Burkhart in "Conrad the Victorian"). A careful and complete reading of this remarkable anthology reveals that the literature of the Transition age is anchored in Victorianism and should not for topicality's sake be seen as a mere preparation for Modernism . Another noteworthy collection, Greiner's and Stilz's anthology of English essays on naturalism, most of which were first published between 1880 and 1920 (including Thomas Hardy's "Candour in English Fiction" and George Moore's "Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals"), pleads for the revaluation of naturalism, a literary term which far too often has given way to realism and whose claim and efficiency have very frequently been questioned within the historiography of English literature. According to Greiner and Stilz, naturalism is a distinct literary movement in England not to 408 be confounded with misleading surrogates such as realism (Introduction, pp. 1, 23-24, 28-30). Ulrich Horstmann's inspiring study, an important contribution to both the examination of late Victorian literature and to literary theory, looks at aestheticism and decadence as a prototheory of anthropofugal modernity: anthropocentric patterns of perception and interpretation are exchanged for anthropofugal ones (see especially pp. 198, 221). In the literary theory of the late nineteenth century, there is a far-reaching flight from nature and life to artificiality and artifact, from personal identity to mask and image, from dialogue to monologue, from nearness to distance. In their introduction to an interesting volume of articles on the nineties, Pfister and Schulte-Middelich regard our pre-apocalyptic fears as the essential basis of the new renaissance of the nineties, a janus-faced decade, full of extremes and contradictions, displaying at the same time both late romantic and early modern features. Almost all contributions , whether they deal with Victorianism and the sexual revolution, with the dandy and the "new woman," or with the political discours of the period, emphasize the transitional character of the nineties. Ulrike Möhlheim, for instance, in "Thomas Hardys Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure . Wandlungen der Erzähltechnik zwischen Mythos und Sozialkritik," views Hardy's step from Tess to Jude as a paradigm of the transition from Victorianism to Modernism (hero vs. anti-hero, myth vs. social criticism). 2. G^ K^ Chesterton Two books may point to something of a German Chesterton renaissance: Matthias Wörther's G_^ K_^ Chesterton—Das unterhaltsame Dogma. Begriffe des Glaubens als Entdeckungskategorien (Frankfurt/M., Bern, New York, Nancy: Peter Lang, 1984) and Carl Amery's G^ K_^ Chesterton oder Der Kampf gegen die K31te (Freiburg, Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1981). In his theological dissertation, Wörther presents Chesterton's works as a successful reconciliation of humor with dogma, of fun with seriousness, as a kind of hilarious science in support of differentiation and variety, of complexity and plurality; according to Chesterton, the capacity for discovery inheres in Man's belief in...