W.G. Sebald's postsecular redemption : catastrophe with spectator / Russell J.A. Kilbourn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kilbourn, Russell J. A. (Russell James Angus), 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg), 1944-2001--Criticism and interpretation.

Sebald, W. G.

Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg), 1944-2001.

Redemption in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 220 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Focusing on W. G. Sebald's four works of prose fiction-- The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, The Emigrants, and Austerlitz --Russell J. A. Kilbourn traces the author's abiding preoccupation with redemption in a world that has been described as postsecular. He shows that Sebald's work stands between modernism's ironic hopes for redemption and whatever comes after. Out of the spectacle of humankind's slow-motion self-destruction, a "Sebaldian subject"--masculine, melancholic, ironic, potentially queer-emerges across the four prose narratives. Alongside Sebald studies' traditional subjects, which include memory, historiography, Sebald's critique of an image-based culture, and his highly intermedial poetics, W. G. Sebald's Postsecular Redemption demonstrates Sebald's relevance for affect theory, new materialism, and the posthuman turn. It critiques the possibility of metaphysical or eroto-salvific models of redemption, arguing against the temptation of psychoanalytic interpretations, as Sebald's work of memory rejects the discourse of redemption in favor of restitution. In its consideration of Sebald's place in twentieth-century literature and after, Kilbourn's book engages with such predecessors as Nabokov, Kafka, Conrad, and Beckett, concluding with comparisons with contemporaries Claudio Magris and Alice Munro.

Contents:

Introduction. Sebaldian ironies : from postmodern metafiction to postsecular redemption

Catastrophe with spectator : remediating the modernist subject in The rings of Saturn

"The extermination of the voyager who turns into a landscape" : intermediality and postsecular redemption in The rings of Saturn

Interminable journeys : vertigo and Kafka's "Wandering Jew of the ocean"

Metafictional redemption : The emigrants and Nabokov's "Butterfly man"

"A vision intended for my liberation" : ironic eschatology and masculine identity in Kafka, Sebald, and Magris

"The gift of being remembered" : Speak, memory and Austerlitz

"One is always at home in one's past" : Austerlitz and The view from Castle Rock

Coda. "in the name of the victims" : memory, redemption, restitution.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780810138087

0810138085

9780810138100

0810138107

OCLC:

1028904526