The hotel as setting in early twentieth-century German and Austrian literature : checking in to tell a story

Bibliographic Information

The hotel as setting in early twentieth-century German and Austrian literature : checking in to tell a story

Bettina Matthias

(Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture / edited by James Hardin)

Camden House, 2006

  • : [hardcover]

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The hotel as setting in early 20th-century German and Austrian literature : checking in to tell a story

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"Transferred to digital printing 2013"--T.p. verso

Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-214) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The employment of the hotel as a setting for literary works of the period and the cultural reasons behind it. As the bourgeois concept of "home" became problematic after important changes in German-speaking society during the 19th century, many fiction writers chose the literary setting of the hotel to explore the status of the individualand the notions of public and private. As social microcosms, hotels are fitting experimental settings for literary inquiries into the tension between the individual's quest for a place in the world and the technocratic rationalism of modern life. The book has two parts, the first establishing the cultural and theoretical context and the second providing analyses of literary works set in hotels. A brief history of commercial hospitality and a chapter establishing the theoretical framework of the hotel as a paradigmatic, ambivalent, semi-public, and stage-like modern space lead to readings of texts by Schnitzler, Zweig, Werfel, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Joseph Roth, and Vicki Baum. Bettina Matthias is Associate Professor of German at Middlebury College.

Table of Contents

Introduction The History of European Commercial Hospitality The Hotel and Hotel Culture in Modernism--Some Critical Thoughts Players and Places: Stock Elements of Hotel Culture and Fiction Women in Hotels Men in Hotels Menschen im Hotel Epilogue Bibliography Index

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