| While recent studies on the GDR's newest literature, so-called "young" literature, have noted its ideologically aberrant tendencies, none have explored its impact on literary scholarship in the country. This dissertation pursues a twofold objective: It examines not only the tension between the dominant school in GDR literary studies, a communicative-functional approach, and the literature of the GDR's "young" authors, i.e., Christoph Hein, Uwe Saeger, Uwe Kolbe, and others, but also the developments in GDR literary theory and methodology in the 1980s that reduce the schism between this literature and its study.;The methodology used is of necessity eclectic. To elucidate the divergence of this literature from theoretical expectations, particularly when the works manifest socially hostile or subjectivistic tendencies, the evaluative criteria of Marxist-Leninist literary theory are applied to "young" literature. Actual analyses and critiques from GDR scholars assist this procedure. The development of a new concept of German socialist literature, at least to the point before the GDR abandoned its allegiance to Marxism-Leninism, is inferred by summarizing selected theoretical and methodological movements within the past ten years.;The notable rejection of the functional concept of literature in favor of a concept oriented toward the art form demarcates a new course of GDR literary study in the 1980s. A move toward viewing literature as autonomous, separate from sociopolitical obligations, is evident. "Young" literature's poetic and aesthetic qualities receive increased attention opposed to its ideologically difficult messages. Realism, as an evaluative category, ceases to factor centrally in determining the socialist value of these literary works. Literary theory calls for increased reader responsibility in the 1980s, assigning to the reader total responsibility for any positive social application these works may have.;These changes denote not only the surrender of certain literary concepts considered progressive in the 1970s, but also the sacrifice of certain socialist literary concepts that have formed literary studies in the GDR since 1949. In effect, "young" GDR literature precipitated a quiet "revolution" in GDR literary studies long before the word "revolution" became synonymous with general developments in the country after October 1989. |
