Even Teistung
Academic interests
- German literature (1900s, 2000s)
- Generic hybrids
- Literature and history
- Travel writing
- Fragments and short forms
- The essay
- Literary criticism
- Literature and politics
- Norwegian periodical culture
Background
- MA in comparative literature from University of Oslo (2018)
- Literary critic in Klassekampen (2019-to date)
- Editor of BLA - Bokvennen Litterær Avis (2019-2022)
Tags:
comparative literature,
German Literature,
History,
Borders,
Homelessness,
Identity,
Criticism,
Periodicals
Published
Sep. 2, 2022 9:51 AM
- Last modified
Feb. 16, 2023 10:11 AM
Century of flight
Flight and homelessness in W.G. Sebald and Jenny Erpenbeck
This project is a comparative study of the works of W.G. Sebald and Jenny Erpenbeck – specifically the books Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz, and Heimsuchung, Aller Tage Abend and Gehen, Ging, Gegangen. These books all handle different experiences of flight, displacement, homelessness and loss of identity, and they question what terms such as “home”, “identity” and “nation” demarcate.
The authors write against differing backgrounds marked by fracturing: In Sebald’s case the Shoah and the German moral collapse; in Erpenbeck’s the collapse of the East-German utopia. Common for the authors is that these collapses make up a backdrop for the experience of homelessness, seeing that humans cross borders, borders cross humans, or the German national border changes its shape following political happenings. Such changes bring about fractures in both space and time – and these fractures have consequences for the persons who experience them. I investigate how Sebald and Erpenbeck give literary shape to such experience, what the experiences can tell us about the modern concept of “Germany” – and how the fractures and raptures partake in shaping the literary works.