Standaard Boekhandel gebruikt cookies en gelijkaardige technologieën om de website goed te laten werken en je een betere surfervaring te bezorgen.
Hieronder kan je kiezen welke cookies je wilt inschakelen:
Technische en functionele cookies
Deze cookies zijn essentieel om de website goed te laten functioneren, en laten je toe om bijvoorbeeld in te loggen. Je kan deze cookies niet uitschakelen.
Analytische cookies
Deze cookies verzamelen anonieme informatie over het gebruik van onze website. Op die manier kunnen we de website beter afstemmen op de behoeften van de gebruikers.
Marketingcookies
Deze cookies delen je gedrag op onze website met externe partijen, zodat je op externe platformen relevantere advertenties van Standaard Boekhandel te zien krijgt.
Je kan maximaal 250 producten tegelijk aan je winkelmandje toevoegen. Verwijdere enkele producten uit je winkelmandje, of splits je bestelling op in meerdere bestellingen.
This volume presents a new approach to the political engagement of three major West German authors, Uwe Johnson, Günther Grass and Martin Walser. Whereas analysis of intellectuals' participation in the political upheaval of the late 1960s has tended to focus on speeches written in response to contemporary events, this book examines works of fiction for the way in which authors reflected upon their engagement in a more contemplative medium. Examination of these literary reflections reveals a mismatch between writers' confidence as public intellectuals and their private anxiety. Beginning with a survey of intellectual engagement until the late 1960s, the present volume moves onto a theoretical discussion of the legitimacy of authors' public interventions. Three chapters are devoted to the fiction of Uwe Johnson, Günther Grass, and Martin Walser. Uwe Johnson's fiction embodies retreat, an acknowledgment of political impotence. Günther Grass's novels present the failings of the engaged intellectual as exemplary to an audience which is expected to learn from this inadequacy. Finally, Martin Walser's intellectual characters stylise private weakness to appeal to a middle-brow audience titillated by the public figure's confession of impotence. In Walser's work, political engagement degenerates into pure form, into a Camp gesture of authors' obsession with their private selves.