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In this 1982 book, Professor Bance sets the novels of Theodor Fontane in the context of nineteenth-century Europe in order to demonstrate that his œouvre can be seen in terms of a tension between a desire to present the facts and a desire to assert some transcendent poetic truth.
First published in Germany to popular and critical acclaim, this is a unique portrait of the life and work of Theodor Fontane, the greatest German novelist of his age, as well as a major poet and theater critic and much loved travel writer. Gordon A. Craig, one of the foremost scholars of German history, interpolates a cohesive historical biography of Fontane with his own reflections on the art, culture, and politics of Fontane's world. The ideas and impressions of Fontane and Craig echo one another throughout the book in compelling and fascinating ways. Fontane's travel accounts of Scotland and Prussia are enriched by Craig's discussion of Germany's increasingly national vision of itself and the world at the time of unification. Similarly, Craig's mastery of German military history dovetails remarkably well with Fontane's reportage on Germany's wars with Denmark, Austria, and France. Interesting are Fontane's ruminations over his great contemporary Otto von Bismarck, whom he revered as founder of the Reich but whose policies he feared would in the end be self-defeating. Although Fontane's Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg and his novels are more widely read in Germany today than they were in his own time, and although his masterpiece Effi Briest was the basis for a famous Fassbinder film, Fontane remains little known in the English-speaking world. Theodor Fontane is the ideal introduction to this major European writer, a master of social analysis and one of the great letter writers of his age.
This was the first of Fontane's sixteen novels, most of which became classics of the realist genre. Set in Berlin, shortly before the Prussians rebelled against Napolean, the novel resembles War and Peace. This World's Classics edition is the first and only available in English translation.
Theodor Fontane (1819-98), widely regarded as Germany's most significant novelist between Goethe and Thomas Mann, pioneered the German novel of manners and upper-class society, following a trend in European fiction of the period. The Stechlin is Fontane's last book and his political testament. Like Effi Briest, his great work on the place of women in Bismarck's empire, it is set at the apex of the Wilhelmine era, both in Berlin and on the estate of a Prussian Junker on the shores of Lake Stechlin. It is a significant historical and cultural document, probably the finest chronicle of the life style of the German upper classes in the late nineteenth century; Fontane portrays the best in the life and ways of the passing Prussian aristocrats, while describing his hopes for the future of Germany and its nobility, which were never to be fully realized. Although this novel has been translated into many languages, it has never before been available in English; this edition thus fills an important gap in the significant works of European literature accessible to English readers.
This 1982 book examines the novels of Theodor Fontane, one of the most important German novelists of the nineteenth century. He has been well served by English translations and is now regarded as a writer of international standing. Professor Bance begins by setting Fontane's work in the context of nineteenth-century Europe in general, and Germany in particular, which was struggling with its late modernization. The increasing materialism of modern industrial society found its literary correlative in the rise of prose fiction to supplant poetry as the predominant literary mode. Fontane's career reflects this development: beginning as a writer of ballads and balladesque novels, he gradually developed into a realistic novelist capable of treating the most complex social relations. Professor Bance argues that Fontane's œuvre can be seen in terms of a tension between a desire to present the facts and a desire to assert some transcendent poetic truth.
Opposites attract, and Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, the appealing married couple at the center of this engrossing book by one of Germany’s greatest novelists, could not be less alike. Christine is a serious soul from a devout background. She is brooding and beautiful and devoted to her husband and their two children. Helmut is lighthearted and pleasure-loving and largely content to defer to his wife’s deeper feelings and better wisdom. They live in a beautiful large house overlooking the sea, which they built themselves, and have been happily married for twenty-three years—only of late a certain tension has crept into their dealings with each other. Little jokes, casual endearments, long-meditated plans: they all hit a raw nerve. How a couple can slowly drift apart, until one day they find themselves in a situation which is nothing they ever wished for but from which they cannot go back, is at the heart of this timeless story of everyday life. Theodor Fontane’s great gift is to tell the story effectively in his characters’ own words, listening to how they talk and fail to talk to each other, watching them turn away from their own true feelings as much as from each other. Irretrievable is a nuanced, affectionate, enormously sophisticated, and profoundly humane reckoning with the blindness of love.
When Erika Drake, of the Westmount Drakes, met and fell in love with Marc Reiser, a Jew from northern Ontario, their respective worlds were turned upside down. Set against the backdrop of the first three years of the Second World War, Earth and High Heaven captured the hearts and minds of its generation and helped to shape the more diverse and inclusive culture we have today. Published in 1944, this classic novel was very timely; it spoke of the prejudices of its time, when Gentiles and Jews did not mix in society. Earth and High Heaven was the most successful novel of its time, winning many awards and prizes, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1945 (an award founded to reward books that exposed racism or explored the richness of human diversity). It was translated into eighteen languages and the film rights were purchased by Samuel Goldwyn for a remarkable $100,000. Earth and High Heaven was the first Canadian novel to top the New York Times bestseller list for the better part of a year.
Cleverly interwoven with historical fact, Under the Pear Tree presents a fascinating picture of 19th century German village society and the intricacies of a murder story which with its psychological and ghostly elements still manages to transcend the centuries. Theodor Fontane is perhaps the greatest of Germany's 19th century realist writers. This is the first English translation of this novel.