| The dissertation analyzes the role of Die Schlafwandler in architectural discourse of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Europe and the importance of architecture in the construction of the modernist experimental novel. The theoretical framework of this analysis of literary spatial production is based on Henri Lefebvre's model in The Production of Space and expands upon his notion of experience with theories of everyday use and issues of power developed by Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault respectively. The dissertation shows how Broch's novels comment on the social forces of spatial production and form a representation of architecture during the period of the trilogy's action (1888--1918) and the period when Broch writes the trilogy (1929--33).; My dissertation first focuses on the roles and themes associated with architecture within Die Schlafwandler. Theoretical discussions of architecture, characters' everyday experience of architecture, relationships between memory, identity, and constructed space: themes such as these are investigated and compared to similar themes in architectural history and theory. A reading of the trilogy focused on its architectural representations reveals that the dual role of architecture as both a visual and spatial experience is in crisis.; Through its contribution to and inclusion of architectural discourse, Die Schlafwandler also recognizes the ability of architecture to reveal new characteristics of modernity's crisis. The narrator and his dual role as author and character exposes the contemporary state of architecture as mere representation. Further, the novels do not merely address and depict architecture and spatial production within their pages but are also constructed as spatial forms. The analysis of the two levels of Die Schlafwandler ---both its content and form---must also be interpreted from the perspective of the reader. Forcing the reader to become a producer converts a representation of crisis in aesthetic modernism and the evidence of its effects on society and the modern individual from a passive reading experience into an active one. This new approach to Broch's Schlafwandler uncovers a trilogy that tests the boundaries of architectural and literary modernism, but also illuminates the advantages of an analysis of the architectural structures in and of literary forms. |
