Swarthmore College Works German Studies Faculty Works German Studies 2000 Epistolary Novel Sunka Simon Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-german Part of the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Sunka Simon. (2000). "Epistolary Novel". Encyclopedia Of German Literature. 255-257. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-german/22 This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in German Studies Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. epistolary novel 255 torical transcendence of that society, but in its explicit emphasis ated with it have become incorporated into the standard reper- on the susceptibility of the social world to processes of change toire of effects in international theater. that derive ultimately from the changing nature of economic David Midgley production. In Brecht’s view, it is a fundamental purpose of Epic Theater to represent the world as changeable. It was on this ba- Further Reading sis that he developed ideas about techniques of Verfremdung Benjamin, Walter, Versuche über Brecht, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1966; as (i.e., representing aspects of the familiar world on stage in ways Understanding Brecht, London: New Left Books, 1973 that made them appear strange or remarkable). He wanted Epic Brauneck, Manfred, editor, Klassiker der Schauspielregie: Positionen Theater to assist the audiences of a “scientific age” in compre- und Kommentare zum Theater im 20. Jahrhundert, Reinbek bei hending the complexities of the world in which they lived and to Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988 Fuegi, John, Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, According to Plan, Cambridge and train them in the habits of observation appropriate to that New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 world. It is also clear from Brecht’s actual practice in theater, as Grimm, Reinhold, editor, Episches Theater, Cologne and Berlin: well as from his later theoretical writings (particularly the 1948 Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1966; 3rd edition, 1972 “Short Organum for the Theatre”), however, that the effects of Innes, C.D., Erwin Piscator’s Political Theatre: The Development of discovery that he wished to offer theater audiences depended as Modern German Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, much on judicious combinations of conventional theatrical tech- 1972 niques (including naturalistic ones) as they did on the innovative Knopf, Jan, Brecht-Handbuch: Theater, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980 style of acting that he describes in his early writings. Brecht’s Speirs, Ronald, Bertolt Brecht, Basingstoke: Macmillan, and New York: conception of Epic Theater became influential in the 1950s and St. Martin’s Press, 1987 1960s—when the reputation of the Berliner Ensemble was at its Szondi, Peter, Theorie des modernen Dramas: 1880–1950, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956; as Theory of the Modern Drama, Cambridge and height—not only in the sense that it invited imitation but also Oxford: Polity, and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, that it stimulated writers and directors to develop his ideas in a 1987 critical spirit both within the German Democratic Republic Voigts, Manfred, Brechts Theaterkonzeptionen: Entstehung und (Volker Braun, Peter Hacks, and Heiner Müller) and further Entfaltung bis 1931, Munich: Fink, 1977 afield (Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Peter Weiss, Edward Willett, John, The Theatre of Erwin Piscator: Half a Century of Politics Bond, and Peter Brook). Since that time, the techniques associ- in the Theatre, London: Methuen, 1978 Epistolary Novel Traditional definitions and descriptions of epistolary fiction, framed within an authorial narrative. Samuel Richardson pro- and, specifically, the epistolary novel, epitomize the schizo- fessedly based his epistolary novel of morality, Pamela; or, Virtue phrenic elitism inherent in modern literary criticism. On the one Rewarded (1740), on his model book of letters for educated hand, the letter per se, subsumed as a subgenre under auto- young women. One of the most famous instances of letters pro- biographical writings, is valued because it provided the develop- ducing a fiction around their author’s voice and their historical ing modern novel with a naturalized link to historical authenticity are the Lettres Portugaises (1669; Portuguese Let- authenticity. The letter supposedly grounded the novel in empir- ters), supposedly written by the narrator herself, a young nun; ical reality. For this purpose, 18th-century novels, circumspect we have recently discovered, however, that the work was written for their fictionality and their portrayal of bourgeois interiors by Claude Barbin himself after all. But even before the author- that revealed the previously hidden lives of women, often in- ship was suspect, writing a la Portugaise became the crier clude editorial prefaces that base the novel’s existence on the cir- dernier style for a whole generation of amorous correspondences cumstantial discovery of a “bag of mail,” as in Christian F. and epistolary novels. Gellert’s Leben der schwedischen Gräfin von G*** (1750; Life On the other hand, the letter’s attraction for expressions of of the Swedish Countess G***). In such works, the author hides desire, whether in the form of personal confession, scandalous behind the professional objectivity of an editor, simply collecting gossip, or political challenge, has also imbued the epistolary and sorting an autobiographical narrative rather than inventing novel with a heightened sentimentality, as in Sophie von La it. The result is a “double fictionality,” by which one fiction au- Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771; The His- thenticates the other in form of a fiction (H. Brown). In addition, tory of Lady Sophia Sternheim) and Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s once the 18th-century epistolary writers stripped the letter of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; translated as The Sor- most of the classical ideas of rhetoric and style, they raised the rows of Young Werther and The Sufferings of Young Werther), aristocratic idea of aesthetic “Natürlichkeit” (naturalness) to the which was a vent for excess and licentiousness. Choderlos des genre’s new code (Nickisch, Nies). Due to women’s perceived Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782; Dangerous Liaisons) role as mediators between culture and nature, authentic letters is an example of the latter, so-called extravagant narratives by women or letters written as women would have supposedly (MacArthur), not only in content but also in form: the rake written them presented a “natural origin,” which could then be Marquis de Valmont writes his most famous love letter to Copyright © 2000. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. & Francis Group. © 2000. Taylor Copyright 256 epistolary novel virtuous Madame de Tourvel—the letter that finally proves his rated by time and place and defined accordingly. In addition, a honorable intentions to her—on the naked back of a prostitute. letter, real or metaphorical, is a dispatch, conceived of as a phys- While the letter form thus imparted its fiction of legitimacy to ical object moving through time and space (e.g., a message in a the new genre, the modern novel, it also imparted to it its inces- bottle, Rohrpost, or Briefpost); its very existence as a letter pre- tuous and adulterous desires (also the desire for the transgres- supposes a detachment from its originating environment (writer, sion of its generic limits, desires that both founded and sender, place, and time). But as the discussion about the subject- challenged the novel’s status [Tanner]). With Mikhail Bakhtin, position should have made clear, it is not just the letter that one could call the epistolary novel the most obvious expression changes location; the subject itself is dislocated in the process. of polyphonic discourse. Hans Robert Jauss even goes so far as Jacques Derrida studies this result of the postal system in his the- to see a displacement of the sentimental novel of the 18th cen- oretical epistolary novel La Carte Postal (1980; The Postcard). tury by a self-reflective critique of the novel via letters. With the advance of mechanically and electronically handled In addition to the importance of the epistolary form for the mail, mail-order business transactions, computerized banking, modern novel during the course of its development in the 18th and electronic mail via fax, satellite, or computer, it is under- century, authors and scholars in the period conducted their liter- standable that literary scholars find it difficult to sort out their ary theory and philosophy as, not just in form of, epistolary cor- letters. Ivar Ivask and John L. Brown’s essays in the special issue respondence and thereby, as Habermas (1987) and Heckendorn of World Literature Today: The Letter: A Dying Art? (1990) Cook have argued, expanded their bourgeois private sphere to a provide an example of this difficulty in their melodramatic ac- literary public. For the German context, Gert Mattenklott expli- counts of the fate of the letter in a media age. Ivask believes that cates how the “longing for autarchic self-creation” reached its scholars and readers alike find a respite from “impersonal exper- high point with the Romantics and their “embracing of theory imentation for experimentation’s sake” in the letter form, which and novel.” As evidenced by Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde (1799) lets them “share in the realities of our common human experi- and his Gespräch über die Poesie (1800), the Romantic mixture ence in time and place.” Brown states that all agree that “the of reflections, letters, and bildungsroman ruptured narrative au- health of the letter has been dealt a fatal blow by the telephone, thority, which in turn structurally shaped the form of the mod- the telegram, the cassette, the fax, and other technical innova- ern novel. According to Karl Heinz Bohrer, Gustav Hillard, and tions that have deprived it of its raison d’être. The authentic Gottfried Honnefelder, the letter exhausted its special qualities ‘personal’ letter (factitious as this can often be) has been further as a dialogic medium in the process.