THE SPACE OF AMERICA IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN NOVEL (GERMANY, FRANCE)
Abstract
The United States of America holds a special fascination for the European imagination. Some novelists have used America to demonstrate a new concept of reality: that the world consists of simultaneously existing phenomena. In the literary work this leads to juxtaposition as the main structuring device. In Alain Robbe-Grillet's Projet pour une revolution a New York the city of New York serves as a metaphor for the space of the mind. It triggers a series of crime and violence ridden phantasies which all happen in closed spaces striking through their geometricity. Through the emphasis on space, especially on geometric abstraction, Robbe-Grillet declares space to be the structuring principle of reality. Michel Butor attempts in Mobile to describe the United States as a spatial entity. He exploits the physical aspects of a book like different types of print, several columns on the page, etc. to integrate through juxtaposition simultaneously existing elements of the country. In Montauk by Max Frisch America and Europe correspond to the time levels of present and past. The protagonist Max Frisch tries to establish a new identity in America. However, this attempt is shown as being futile, as past and present constantly merge. In the human mind different aspects of the personality coexist simultaneously. Peter Handke's first person narrator in Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied also travels to America to escape his European identity. Europe stands for the individual's alienation from the outside world expressed through a neurotic sense of the passing of time. In America the protagonist finds a state of timelessness. Uwe Johnson's Jahrestage integrate the past of the protagonist Gesine Cresspahl into her present day American life experience. Both levels coexist simultaneously and thus demonstrate Johnson's static perception of time. The juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements, of America and Germany, of past and present, expresses the essentiality spatial nature of reality. In all five novels the space of America serves as a means to show that the world exists as a spatial entity of which time is only a subordinate aspect.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Comparative literature|Romance literature|Germanic literature
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