Recent scholarly projects

What a busy year it has been! Still, I've completed two tasks I had set myself and am now at work on two more.

First, I completed an essay on Rilke's Elegies and Sonnets, to appear in a volume on Literature and Culture in 1922, edited by Jean-Michel Rabatë. It's not always easy to write on a topic that has been written on so much--including by me! I did have some exciting new ideas, however, notably about Rilke's relation to Goethe's poetry and how it informs the Duino Elegies.

Second, I finished the essay on Grünbein and classical antiquity. This essay is in German and is titled "Durs Grünbeins antike Dispositionen"; it's in press already and will appear in a volume edited by Ulrich von Bülow called "Archivexpeditionen." In the essay, I write (among other things) about Grünbein's manuscripts and what they show about his approach to Latin literature and history. I focus particularly on Grünbein's understanding of imperialism.

At present, I'm working on a paper for a conference at the University of Kent (Canterbury) on the topic "Kurze Rede, langer Sinn." It's on "reality effects" in the writings of Stifter, Raabe, and Sebald.

Finally, I'm working on Hermann Broch's theory of mass psychology, again for a collected volume.

See also: Grünbein, Rilke, Sebald