Mary Cosgrove Boeken

Uncovers the literary traditions of melancholy that inform major works of postwar and contemporary German literature dealing with the Holocaust and the Nazi period.

Focusing on "Sadness and Melancholy in German-language Literature and Culture," volume 6 investigates the often subversive function and meaning of sadness and melancholy in German-language literature and culture from the seventeenth century to the present where, arguably, it has fallen from the heights of melancholy genius and artistic creativity of earlier epochs to become the embarrassing other of a Western civilization that prizes happiness as the mark of successful modern living. Interrogating the distinction between sadness as an anthropological constant and melancholy as a shifting cultural discourse, the contributions explore how different authors use established literary and cultural topoi from melancholy discourses to comment on topics as diverse as war, religion, gender inequality, and modernity. As well as essays on canonical figures including Goethe and Thomas Mann, the volume features studies of sadness in lesser-known writers such as Betty Paoli and Julia Schoch. -- From publisher's website.

The first English language study of Albert Drach's (1902-1995) prose work explores the originality of Drach's autobiography in the context of current Holocaust debates. Special attention is paid throughout to the relationship between Drach's comic-grotesque language and the melancholy mode of representation in the Holocaust trilogy.