Constructing Authorship in the Work of G}}nter Grass [Hardcover]

This book traces a longstanding concern with issues of authorship throughout the work of G?nter Grass, Germany's best-known contemporary writer and public intellectual. Through detailed close-readings of all of his major literary works from 1970 onwards and careful analysis of his political writings from 1965 to 2005, it argues that Grass's tendency to insert clearly recognizable self-images into his literary texts represents a coherent and calculated reaction to his constant exposure in the media-led public sphere. It underlines the degree of play which has characterized Grass's relationship to this sphere and himself as part of it and explains how a concern with the very concept of authorship has conditioned the way his work as a whole has developed on both thematic and structural levels. The major achievement of this study is to develop a new interpretative paradigm for Grass's work. It explains for the first time how his playful tendency to manipulate his own authorial image conditions all levels of his texts and is equally manifest in literary and political realms.

List of Figures
Note on editions used and frequently cited works
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Models of Authorship: Das Treffen in Telgte in Context
2. Public Constructions of Authorship in Grass's Political Writings, 1965-2005
3. 'Mich [...] in Variationen [...] erz?len' I: Placing the Author in Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke and Kopfgeburten order Die Deutschen sterben aus
4. Aus der Geschichte gefallen': Displacing the Author in Der Butt and Die R?ttin
5. 'Mich [...] in Variationen [...] erz?len' II: Reconstructing the Author in Zunge zeigen and Mein Jahrhundert
6. 'Er, in dessen Namen ich krebsend vorankam': Reading the Author in Ein weites Feld and Im Krebsgang
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index

Rebecca Braun has produced a series of intriguing analyses that are both carefully argued and thought-provoking. They will encourage many readerlS3