Overview

Writing the Mountains reconsiders the role of mountains in German language fiction from 1800 to the present and argues that in a range of texts, from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Die Bergwerke zu Falun” (1819) to Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten (1995) and beyond, mountains serve as dynamic spaces of material change that generate aesthetic and narrative innovation. In contrast to dominant critical approaches to the Alpine landscape in literature, in which mountain ranges often features as passive settings, or which trace the influence of geographical and geological sciences in literary productions, this study argues for the dynamic role in literature of presumably rigid mineral structures. In German-language fiction after 1800, the counter-intuitive topology of rocky mountain ranges and unfathomable subterranean depths of the Alpine imaginary functions as a space of exception which appears to reconfirm and radically challenge the foundations of Enlightenment thought. Writing the Mountains reads the mountain range as a rigid yet permeable liminal space. Within this zone, semiotic orders are unsettled, as is the division between organic and inorganic, between the human and the other.

Full Product Details

Author:   Professor or Dr. Jens Klenner (Bowdoin College, USA) ,  Prof Imke Meyer (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 13.60cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 21.40cm
Weight:   0.240kg
ISBN:  

9798765106518

Pages:   208
Publication Date:   11 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Note on Translation 1. Mountains Transformed—Towards an Alpine Aesthetic 1779—No Human Eye Could Do it Justice Mountains at Rest? Kant and the Sublime Georg Simmel and The Resistance of Mountains Shifting Forms 2. Figures from Mines—E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Die Bergwerke zu Falun” 1720—Summer Source Material An Aesthetic Existence A Task for Poets An Empty Cipher Inversion, Transformations, Transitions 3. Lost in the Mountains—Perspective and Displacement in Georg Büchner’s Lenz Arrivals Windows to the World Return to the Mountains A Lethal Gaze Medusa in the Mountains 4. Folded Mountains—Paul Celan’s “Gespräch im Gebirg” Mountains Vanished August 1959—Reading Leibniz Leaving for the Mountains Wordscapes The Folded Eye 5. Liquid Mountains—Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten Mountain Graves Historical Matters Into the Mountains Metamorphoses—Die Murie. Die Furie Coda Mountains Immaterial Bibliography Index

Reviews

Jens Klenner’s ambitious, historically sweeping study of German mountain literature takes its reader from the Kantian sublime to contemporary ideas of mountain immateriality, digging into some challenging and complex literary expressions of mountains along the way * H-Net Reviews *

Author Information

Jens Klenner is Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College, USA, and a Fellow of the German Studies Association. He has written extensively on German studies and philosophy, with one of his most recent works being the edited journal, Sprache und Rache (2019, co-edited with Juliane Prade-Weiss).

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