Herta Müller

Politics and Aesthetics

Bettina Brandt, Valentina Glajar

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781496209306
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Two languages—German and Romanian—inform the novels, essays, and collage poetry of Nobel laureate Herta Müller. Describing her writing as "autofictional, " Müller depicts the effects of violence, cruelty, and terror on her characters based on her own experiences in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceau?escu regime.

Herta Müller: Politics and Aesthetics explores Müller's writings from different literary, cultural, and historical perspectives. Part 1 features Müller's Nobel lecture, five new collage poems, and an interview with Ernest Wichner, a German-Romanian author who has traveled with her and sheds light on her writing. Parts 2 and 3, featuring essays by scholars from across Europe and the United States, address the political and poetical aspects of Müller's texts. Contributors discuss life under the Romanian Communist dictatorship while also stressing key elements of Müller's poetics, which promises both self-conscious formal experimentation and political intervention.

One of the firstbooks in Englishto thoroughly examine Müller's writing, this volume addresses audiences with an interest in dissident, exile, migration, experimental, and transnational literature.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1. Life, Writing, and Betrayal
• 1. Herta Müller: Writing and Betrayal Allan Stoekl
• 2. Nobel Lecture: Every Word Knows Something of a Vicious Circle Herta Müller
• 3. Collage Poems Herta Müller
• 4. Interview with Ernest Wichner Valentina Glajar and Bettina Brandt
• Part 2. Totalitarianism, Autofiction, Memory
• 5. When Dictatorships Fail to Deprive of Dignity: Herta Müller’s “Romanian Period” Cristina Petrescu
• 6. “Die akute Einsamkeit des Menschen”: Herta Müller’s Herztier Brigid Haines
• 7. Facts, Fiction, Autofiction, and Surfiction in Herta Müller’s Work
• 8. From Fact to Fiction: Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel Olivia Spiridon
• Part 3. Müller’s Aesthetics of Experimentation
• 9. “Wir können höchstens mit dem, was wir sehen, etwas zusammenstellen”: Herta Müller’s Collages Beverley Driver Eddy
• 10. In Transit: Transnational Trajectories and Mobility in Herta Müller’s Recent Writings Monika Moyrer
• 11. Osmoses: Müller’s Things, Bodies, and Spaces Anja Johannsen
• 12. Herta Müller’s Art of Reverberation: Sound in the Collage Books Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen and Este sau nu este Ion Arina Rotaru
• 13. Accumulating Histories: Temporality in Herta Müller’s “Einmal anfassen—zweimal loslassen” Katrina Nousek
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index