Bloomsbury Academic Authors and the World: Literary Authorship in Modern Germany (New Directions in German Studies)

Authors and the World traces how four core ‘modes of authorship’ have developed and inflect one another in modern Germany through a series of twenty different case studies, including the work of Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, Anna Seghers, Walter Höllerer, Felicitas Hoppe and Katja Petrowskaja, and original interview material with contemporary writers Ulrike Draesner, Olga Martynova and Ulrike Almut Sandig. ‘Modes of authorship’ are attitudes taken towards being an author that can be seen both in what an individual author does and in how a particular literary tradition or trend is perceived and mediated by others both within and beyond Pierre Bourdieu’s literary field. Consequently, they deliberately straddle questions of literary production and reception. Rebecca Braun sets out how the commemorative, celebratory, utopian and satirical modes interact with one another to produce a number of models of authorship that carry either foundational or otherwise normative force for society. In varying combinations and with deep roots in 19th- and early 20th-century practices, the four modes of authorship create a remarkably (and at times troublingly) stable German literature network that to a large degree still determines the way contemporary German-speaking authors enact their cultural significance in their writing, engage with their local circumstances, and are more broadly received around the world. Authors and the World provides not just a radically new approach to German literary history but a thoroughly new paradigm for thinking about literary authorship. About the Author Rebecca Braun is Executive Dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland. She has published widely on practices of authorship around the world, and with particular expertise in German-language writing. Major publications include Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass (2008), Cultural Impact in the German Context (2010; co-edited with Lyn Marven), Transnational German Studies (2020; co-edited with Benedict Schofield), and World Authorship (2020; co-edited with Tobias Boes & Emily Spiers).