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Repressed childhoods: Rainer Maria Rilke's and Christa Wolf's quest for a new poetic style in "Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge" and "Kindheitsmuster"
Abstract
The dissertation explores the impact that Rainer Maria Rilke's and Christa Wolf's traumatic childhood experiences had on the development of their creative writing process. Due to the repression of their unacceptable childhood both authors suffered from a dysfunctional self and an ambiguous perception of reality which they strove to counterbalance in their literature. After investigating the parameters of autobiographical fiction, the dissertation traces the two authors' work from an autobiographical perspective, placing an emphasis on Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge and Kindheitsmuster. Three significant developmental stages emerge as the authors are compared and contrasted, dividing their work into three distinct phases. The first phase traces an external adaptation and development of the authors' self-concept in their early reader oriented work. Eventually both authors experienced an identity crisis caused by their artificial self, which encouraged them to reinvestigate their childhood and initiated the process of self-consciousness in their writing. The third phase depicts their struggle to find and accept a genuine self, explaining the authors shift to a more self-aware style in their writing, that finally allowed them to speak with their own voice. Both authors consciously employed the therapeutic aspects of their autobiographical writing in order to produce more persuasive and involved literature which lead to the creation of their most renown works: Die Duineser Elegien and Kassandra respectively.
Subject Area
Germanic literature
Recommended Citation
Drees, Hajo, "Repressed childhoods: Rainer Maria Rilke's and Christa Wolf's quest for a new poetic style in "Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge" and "Kindheitsmuster"" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9430166.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9430166