Realism's gross anatomy: The male grotesque in 1960s West German New Realism and Black Realism

The dissertation examines the construction of the male body in 1960s West German texts of New Realism and Black Realism. It argues that although the New Realists oppose the use of the grotesque in literature, an aesthetic technique favored by the Black Realists, the portrayal of a grotesque male body in both strands of realism exposes the repressive and violent institutions in 1960s society.; The 1960s was a decade of change in many arenas. One of these was the political understanding of the role of sexuality and the family in society. In these discussions, the male body experienced a particular visibility. In addition, literary debates focused on how reality should be portrayed in text and what role literature should play in society. One writer to theorize this was Dieter Wellershoff, whose concept of New Realism was defined as writing against the grotesque realism of Gunter Grass. Some New Realist writers reinserted the use of the grotesque into their portrayal of reality, prompting literary historians to later coin the term Black Realism.; In each literary form, however, the male bodies in the texts are constructed of grotesque elements. Because the grotesque exposes and liquefies the social institutions in which it appears, these male bodies deconstruct social norms exemplified by the texts. The textual male bodies problematize the role of the family and expose the power and sexual structures that form West German society. The construction and function of the male body gives the texts their unifying feature. In this dissertation, I examine texts by Gunter Grass, Dieter Wellershoff, Gisela Elsner, Renate Rasp, and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. The analysis of texts provides a springboard for developing a theory of the male grotesque body that augments the current work on the male body and upturns the general reservation of the grotesque for the feminine. In addition, the dissertation provides a new look at 1960s society and a first analysis of both New Realism and Black Realism in German scholarship.