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Focussing on individual authors from Heinrich Boll to Gunther Grass, Hermann Lenz to Peter Schneider, "The Language of Silence" offers an analysis of West German literature as it tries to come to terms with the Holocaust and its impact on postwar West German society. Exploring postwar literature as the barometer of Germany's unconsciously held values as well as of its professed conscience, Ernestine Schlant demonstrates that the confrontation with the Holocaust has shifted over the decades from repression, circumvention, and omission to an open acknowledgement of the crimes.
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The Language of Silence
“The Language of Silence is a particularly important contribution to literary criticism. More than half a century after the Holocaust it is the first book-length study that analyzes in a critical manner how the West German novel has tried— and often failed—to cope with the burden of the past, with the legacy of the Shoah. Schlant contributes to what she misses in many German novels: mourning of the destruction of Jews in Germany and Europe.” —Paul Michael Lützeler, Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities, Washington University “Ernestine Schlant’s The Language of Silence is one of the most important books on West German culture to appear since the fall of the wall. Schlant details how the Holocaust remains the central preoccupation of (non-Jewish) writers and thinkers from 1949 to the present. Schlant’s book is subtle; it presents to an English-language audience the dilemma of major writers, from the Nobel prize-winning Heinrich Böll to the German emigrant novelist W.G.Sebald, who define themselves as Germans through the Shoah. She provides revealing insights into the obsessive nature of West German culture and its positive transformation of guilt into art.” —Sander L.Gilman, Henry R.Luce Professor of Liberal Arts in Human Biology, the University of Chicago “In The Language of Silence, Ernestine Schlant turns the postwar German fiction that portrays—or distorts—the inferno of the Holocaust into a whole spectrum of images mirroring present-day German societal attitudes toward the past. Breaking new ground as a critic, she holds such novels and stories, given their awesome theme, not only to conventional literary but also to the highest ethical standards. By going beyond narrow analyses of her selected texts she provides both experts and readers unfamiliar with them with an eerily gripping account of the German perspective of the aftermath of the Holocaust.” —Guy Stern, Distinguished Professor of German, Wayne State University
The Language of Silence West German Literature and the Holocaust
ERNESTINE SCHLANT
Routledge New York London
Published in 1999 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Copyright © 1999 by Routledge Designed by Jeff Hoffman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schlant, Ernestine. The language of silence: West German literature and the Holocaust/Ernestine Schlant. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-92219-4 (alk. paper).— ISBN 0-415-92220-8 (pbk.) 1. German literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. German literature—Germany (West) —History and criticism. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (