- Summary
- "The Space of Words ": Diaspora and Exile in the Work of Nelly Sachs draws upon recent work on the notion of diasporic poetics and conceptions of memory within Diaspora studies and Holocaust studies to reconsider Nobel Prize-winning German-Jewish poet Nelly Sachs's (1891-1970) role in 20 th century German literature. Read traditionally as an exile and Holocaust poet, Sachs's work has been cast as a textual memorial that aims to heal the wound of the Holocaust, German-Jewish relations, and restore the German language and its literary tradition to its pre-World War II state. This reading, which has become the standard reading of Sachs's work, presumes that Sachs wrote from a relationship to language, borders, fragmentation, and memory that aims ultimately to return to an originary sacred state. Yet many of Sachs's postwar poetry cycles call precisely this reading into question. Moreover, the characteristics of her work that have been understood as a reaction to the Holocaust, and therefore as an attempt at healing, are central to the prose and poetry Sachs wrote between 1915 and 1939. Reapproaching Sachs's work drawing on Diaspora studies and developments in discourse on memory juxtaposed against conceptions of place and memory in an exilic consciousness allows a more complex reading of Sachs's work and reception, while adding new and urgent perspectives to Holocaust studies, Diaspora studies, and discussions of memory.
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Hoyer, Jennifer Miller.
- Published
- [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], 2007
- Notes
-
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Minnesota, 2007.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-234).
Photocopy. Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Dissertation Services, 2008. 22 cm.
Dissertations and Theses
