They have all been healed : reading Robert Walser / Jan Plug.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Plug, Jan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Walser, Robert, 1878-1956--Criticism and interpretation.

Walser, Robert.

Walser, Robert, 1878-1956.

Healing in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 211 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2016.

Summary:

In perhaps the most provocative reading to date of the Swiss German modernist Robert Walser, Walter Benjamin asserted that Walser's figures "have all been healed." They Have All Been Healed takes up and extends Benjamin's assessment by following the figure of healing throughout major works by Walser, from his minidrama Snow White and his acknowledged masterpieces The Walk and Jakob von Gunten to his enigmatic last novel, the Robber. At the same time, Jan Plug reads Walser alongside his most compelling readers, tracing how not only Benjamin but also Giorgio Agamben, W. G. Sebald, and the Brothers Quay complicate, clarify, and enact that same process of healing in their own work. Working out the theological implications of Walser's work and of the tradition to which he gives rise, Plug at once recasts one of the major authors of the twentieth century and articulates a new conception of healing and salvation. Book jacket.

Contents:

Prologue: "if they have not died"

Shame, on language : Snow White, Benjamin

High points : "The walk," Agamben

Pure amnesia : The robber, Sebald

Vanishing points : Jakob von Gunten, the Brothers Quay

Epilogue: in place of an image.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780810132634

081013263X

9780810132641

0810132648

9780810132658

0810132656

OCLC:

922729020