Abstract
W.G. Sebald’s literary works have been lauded for blurring boundaries of genre and medium as much as time and space. This paper investigates the apparent aimlessness that characterizes his itinerant narrators, who travel in search of elusive memories and connections, as an enactment of critique as a non-teleological process. While many critics who have focused on the melancholic themes of homelessness and belonging in Sebald, this paper departs from previous readings by adapting theories of collective memory that have emerged since Sebald’s untimely death in 2001. Specifically, this paper adapts the concepts of cosmopolitan memory developed by Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, as well as the notion of multidirectional memory articulated by Michael Rothberg, to account for the generative insights offered by Sebald’s first-person narrators as they travel across borders. In exploring how Sebald’s travel writing anticipates ideas foundational to these more recent theoretical innovations, this paper also situates Sebald’s own writing as a performance of adaptation – of media, of critique, and of literary predecessors. Travel becomes the occasion for Sebald’s narrators to muse about legacies of cultural inheritance, which become ways of making sense of a world oscillating between change and stagnation. Historical figures like Casanova, Stendhal, and Kafka materialize in Sebald’s mixed-media novels as travel companions whose works lend themselves to fresh interpretations, even as they help make sense of the narrator’s own fleeting experiences en route.
Presenters
Daniel P. ReynoldsSeth Richards Professor in Modern Languages, German Studies, Grinnell College, Iowa, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Sebald, Adaptation, Travel, Critique, Genre, Multidirectional Memory, Cosmopolitan Memory
