Literary Representations of Family and Nation In the Writings ofJoseph Roth, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, and IngeborgBachmann Open Access

Abstract

Abstract Literary Representations of Family and Nation In the Writings of Joseph Roth, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, and Ingeborg Bachmann By Ruxandra Mndoiu This dissertation examines literary representations of family and nation and the intersection between these two concepts in the metaphor of the nation-as-family in the works of four twentieth-century East-Central European writers: Joseph Roth, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, and Ingeborg Bachmann. It is a study of the ways in which social and political crises of the nation and empire, such as the collapse of the Austro- Hungarian monarchy, the rise of extreme nationalism, the Second World War, and totalitarianism, impact family life and familial relationships, and how this impact is represented within the domestic space. Roth, Grass, Kundera, and Bachmann reflect on issues of nationalism and imperialism in the twentieth century in various representations of domestic crises. In their writings, individual families undergo various internal crises expressed as domestic conflicts between husband and wife, tense paternal or maternal relationships, resistance and challenge to paternal authority, or the loss of the family as a home and site of identity. In all the novels examined in this dissertation, but especially in those written by Roth and Grass, domestic crises intersect with historical crises in such a way that the family appears as the recipient of conflicts of war and nationalism. However, unlike Roth and Grass, Kundera and Bachmann show that the family is not only a theater for the representation of historical crises, but also the instrument through which the power and violence of war, nationalism, and totalitarianism are expressed and acted out. Thus, in Bachmann's view, the violence of nationalism and war that one nation unleashes against another nation arises primarily from a certain power dynamic that exists within the realm of the family, between a man and a woman. In different ways, Roth, Grass, Kundera, and Bachmann underscore the complicity of the family in the perpetuation of violence in society. However, these writers also establish the family as the site where this violence can be opposed and new moral alternatives can be envisaged.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The family in the nation and the nation-as-family 1

Chapter 1: Family, Empire, and Nation in Two Novels by Joseph Roth 23

Chapter 2: Family, Nation, and Minority in Günter Grass's Novel Die

Blechtrommel 84

Chapter 3: Family, Nation, and Central Europe in Milan Kundera's

Writing 155

Chapter 4: Family, the Legacy of Empire, and Alien-Nation in Postwar

Austria in Ingeborg Bachmann's Work 212

Conclusion 279 Bibliography 291

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Comparative Literature
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Germanic Literature, Comparative Literature, Slavic and East European
Keyword	Austria-Hungary totalitarianism nation-as-family multiculturalism crisis patriarchy Central Europe nationalism
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Bammer, Angelika, Emory University
Committee Members	Aue, Maximilian, Emory University Petraglia-Bahri, Deepika, Emory University

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