Dear colleagues,
(With apologies for cross-posting and self-promotion...)
I hope that the following book may be of interest:
Helen Finch: Sebald’s Bachelors. Queer Resistance and the Unconforming Life. (Germanic Literatures 2). Legenda: Oxford, 2013. Hardback: 152pp
ISBN: 978-1-907975-90-5
Currently available at HALF PRICE (£22.50) throughout the month of October 2013. See http://www.legendabooks.com/titles/isbn/9781907975905.html for more details.
Why do queer bachelors and homosexual desire haunt the works of the German writer W. G. Sebald (1944-2001)? In a series of readings of Sebald’s major texts, from ‘After Nature’ to ‘Austerlitz’, Helen Finch’s pioneering study shows that alternative masculinities subvert catastrophe in Sebald’s works. From the schizophrenic poet Ernst Herbeck to the alluring shade of Kafka in Venice, the figure of the bachelor offers a form of resistance to the destructive course of history throughout Sebald’s critical and literary writing. Sebald’s poetics of homosexual desire trace a ‘line of flight’ away from the patriarchal and repressive order of German society, which, in Sebald’s view, led to the disasters of Nazism. This study shows that the potential for subversion personified by Sebald’s solitary males is essential for understanding his work, while also demonstrating the contribution that Sebald made to the German tradition of queer writing.
Reviews:
‘An ambitious, thin book that contains a dense, closely argued ‘queer reading of Sebald’s work’. The result is one of the most important books on Sebald to date. I am sure that there are a number of Sebald readers, casual and otherwise, who will look askance at a queer reading of his work, but, as Finch demonstrates, the clues – both obvious and coded – are there in plain sight.’ — Terry Pitts, Vertigo 19 September 2013 (http://sebald.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/sebalds-bachelors/)
With best wishes,
Helen
Dr. Helen Finch,
Academic Fellow in German,
School of Modern Languages,
University of Leeds,
LS2 9JT
U.K.
office: Michael Sadler Building 2.22
office hour: Tuesday 15:00-16:00
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
web page: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/20054/german/person/750/helen_finch
monograph: Sebald's Bachelors. Queer Resistance and the Unconforming Life: http://www.legendabooks.com/titles/isbn/9781907975905.html
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