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Theodor Fontane

By Brian Tucker

Theodor Fontane

By Brian Tucker

0 - Default Title
Description
What happens when fashionable forms of unserious speech prove to be contagious, when they adulterate and weaken communicative spheres that rely on honesty, trust, and sincerity? Demonstrating how the tension between irony and avowal constitutes a central conflict in Fontane's works, this book argues that his best-known society novels play out a struggle between the incompatible demands of these two modes of speaking. Read in this light, the novels identify an irreconcilable discrepancy between word and deed as both the root of emotional discord and the proximate cause of historical and political upheaval.
Given the alarm since 2016 over unreliability, falsehood, and indifference to truth, it is now easier to perceive in Fontane's novels a profound concern about language that is not sincere and not meant to be taken literally. For Fontane, irony exemplifies a discrepancy between language and meaning, a loosening of the ethical bond between words and the things to which they refer. His novels investigate the extent to which human relationships can continue to function in the face of pervasive irony and the erosion of language's credibility. Although Fontane is widely regarded as an ironic writer, Tucker's analyses reveal a critical distance between his works and the prospect of irony as a dominant idiom.
Revisiting Fontane's novels in a post-truth age brings the conflict between irony and avowal into sharper relief and makes legible the stakes and contours of our own post-truth condition.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
260
Release Date:
2023-01-26
Publication Date:
2023-01-26
Publisher:
Bloomsbury 3PL
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1501368397
ISBN13:
9781501368394
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
332 g
Height:
140 cm
Width:
216 cm
Thickness:
14 cm
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