Ghostwriting: W. G. Sebalds Poetics of History [Paperback]

Ghostwritingprovides the first comprehensive analysis of the fictional prose narratives of one of contemporary Germany's most recognized authors, the ?migr? writer W. G. Sebald. Examining Sebald's well-known published texts in the context of largely unknown unpublished works, and informed by documents and information from Sebald's literary estate, this book offers a detailed portrait of his characteristic literary techniques and how they emerged and matured out of the practices and attitudes he represented in his profession as a literary scholar.

The title Ghostwriting signals the convergence in Sebald's works of a set of diverse historical questions, philosophical views, and literary practices. Many historical ghosts haunt Sebald's narratives on the level of story. Moreover, Sebald's narrator plays the role of a ghostwriter in the profound sense that his stories fictionally re-enact the histories of obscure, but once-living individuals whose lives they revitalize, and whose fates are tied up with the most virulent historical conjunctures of the modern world. This study thus seeks to comprehend the constitutive elements of Sebald's poetics of history, his implementation of literary tools for effective historical memorializing.

Richard T. Grayis the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities and Professor of German and European Studies at the University of Washington, USA. He is the author of five books, includingMoney Matters: Economics and the German Cultural Imagination, 1770-1850(2008),A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia(with Ruth V. Gross, Rolf Goebel, and Clayton Koelb; 2005),About Face: German Physiognomic Thought from Lavater to Auschwitz(2004), andStations of the Divided Subject: Contestation and Ideological Legitimation in German Bourgeois Literature, 1770-1912(1995). He is the editor and/or translator of 11 books, including Volumes 2 and 11 ofThe Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche in 2l3