Publisher's Synopsis
These essays contribute to the lively critical debate that has arisen over the past two decades, a debate fuelled by a number of concerns: Stifter's historicity as the late inheritor of the great Classical-Romantic period of German literature, his modernity as the spokesman for disunity and the perilous condition of the human subject, and his post-modernity, as evidenced by the signs of self-referentiality and quasi-ritualistic performativity associated with post-modern cultural practices which his writing begins to display.
