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ORCID
N/A
Access Type
Open Access Thesis
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
Comparative Literature
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2016
Month Degree Awarded
September
Abstract
In the wake of the industrialization, urbanization, and global conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europe was forced to call into question its Enlightenment faith. In particular, Bildung—as the cultural education of the individual that emerged out of the Enlightenment—lost its footing amidst experience’s new texture of trauma. This thesis will examine Rilke’s Duineser Elegien, Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann, and Michaux’s Misérable miracle as each work pertains to and reconceives of the intertwining of Bildung and elegy, as a literary form both underpinned by and unconvinced of Bildung. For them, I will argue, elegy served as a potential form for re-writing historical indifference and for preparing, through limit-experience and loss, linguistic antidotes for the elision of difference produced in history’s wake.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/8603610
First Advisor
Jim Hicks
Second Advisor
María Soledad Barbón
Third Advisor
Dianne Sears
Recommended Citation
Heilker, Emily, "Vielleicht hier, um zu sagen: Bildung and Elegy in the Duineser Elegien, Du côté de chez Swann, and Misérable miracle" (2016). Masters Theses. 421.
https://doi.org/10.7275/8603610
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/421
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, German Literature Commons