ISBN: 9781571133038

A new analysis of one of the most loaded terms in the German language: Heimat, or Homeland.The idea of Heimat (home, homeland, native region) has been as important to German self-perc… Mehr…

A new analysis of one of the most loaded terms in the German language: Heimat, or Homeland.The idea of Heimat (home, homeland, native region) has been as important to German self-perceptions over the last two hundred years as the shifting notion of the German nation. While the idea of Heimat has been long neglected in English studies of German culture—among other reasons because the word Heimat has no exact equivalent in English—this book offers us the first cross-disciplinary and comprehensive analysis, in English or German, of this all-pervasive German idea. Blickle shows how the idea of Heimat interpenetrates German notions of modernity, identity, gender, nature, and innocence. Blickle reminds us of such commonplace expressions of Heimat sentimentality as Biedermeier landscapes of Alpine meadows and castles on the Rhine, but also finds the Heimat preoccupation in Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. Always aware of the many literary representations of Heimat (for instance in Schiller, Hölderlin, Heine, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), Blickle does not argue for the fundamental innocence of Heimat. Instead he shows again and again how the idealization of a home ground leads to borders of exclusion.Peter Blickle is associate professor of German at Western Michigan University. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Classics>Lit Studies>Lit Theory & Criticism, Boydell & Brewer, Limited Core >1<

ISBN: 9781571133038

BOYE6. New. Special order direct from the distributor, BOYE6, 6

2004, ISBN: 9781571133038

Camden House, 2004. Paperback. New. 198 pages. 8.75x6.00x0.50 inches., Camden House, 2004, 6