Bloomsbury Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond: Flirtation, Passive Aggression, Domestic Violence: 29 (New Directions in German Studies)

Our main words defining emotional states suggest that we have clarity about them: expressions like "love," "hatred," "anxiety," or "sorrow" seem clear enough. The reality, however, tends to be more complicated. We are often faced with gestures and utterances that are difficult to interpret; we thus find ourselves wondering about the affective force of what has just been said: "Was that an insult?" "Flirtation?" "Aggression?" Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond looks at three interlocking forms of social violence--flirtation, passive aggression, and domestic violence. In order to understand their circulation, ittraces their literary-historical genealogy in German realism and modernism--in scenes from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Storm, Theodor Fontane, Robert Walser, and Franz Kafka, covering a historical period from the middle of the 19th century to the early decades of the 20th century. Reading realist and modernist literature through 21st-century affect theory and vice versa, the analyses collected in this book show the deep literary history of our current cultural predicaments and predilections. Review [A] daringly original, elegantly written, rigorous, and witty book ... Nagel’s slim book is a power tool with a broad range of applications. It combines historical with formal (in particular, narratological and rhetorical) analysis of realist and modernist works in tandem and considers intimate verbal and physical aggression, in its larger social context, as an emotional phenomenon, thus drawing on and contributing to affect studies. The result is a wealth of insights. … For somewhat different reasons, contemporary feminism, literary studies, and affect studies all need a high tolerance for and a strong practice of ambiguity. Ambiguous Aggression in German Realismand Beyond intervenes at the intersection of these three fields to sharpen our sensorium for the workings of ambiguity. This is a brilliantly structured and deftly argued book that models a new kind of scholarship: rigorously formalist and politically relevant. --Comparative LiteratureNagel has broken new ground no the subject of aggression in German literature and has demonstrated great analytical skill in attending to a topic that is hard to grasp in its ambiguity. Ambiguous Aggression is not only of interest to scholars and students of German literature, it also contributes to current debates on aggression and violence. --Monatshefte[I]f one is interested in German realism or in the representation of violence in literary works, this book is a must-read. It refreshes the discourse on everyday violence and offers a substantial new way of reading violence, especially in our contemporary context. --German Studies Review About the Author Barbara N. Nagel is Assistant Professor of German at Princeton University, USA. She is the author of Der Skandal des Literalen. Barocke Literalisierungen bei Gryphius, Kleist, Büchner (2012) and co-editor (with Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz and Lauren Shizuko Stone) of Flirtations: Rhetoric and Aesthetics This Side of Seduction (2015).