| In this thesis I investigate the relationship between fiction and nonfiction in certain works of German literature from this century. I argue that some texts deliberately blur the boundary separating fiction from nonfiction in order to challenge narrative's ability to represent reality. My aim is twofold: first, to characterize this century's various literary periods in terms of how they regard narrative's ability to represent reality; second, to demonstrate that the fundamental distinction between fiction and nonfiction can and must be sustained, even if that distinction is based on convention.; The dissertation begins with an introduction into the problem of truth as it relates to narrative. I articulate the problem via Nietzsche, citing his essays Uber Wahrheit und Luge im aussermoralischen Sinne and Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fur das Leben to illustrate the questions concerning narrative representations of reality. I then give a brief overview of the response to this problem by scholars who use narrative as a medium. In the subsequent chapters I examine four case studies as responses to this problem: Rainer Maria Rilke's Worpswede (1903), Hermann Broch's Die Schlafwandler (1932), Gunter Grass' Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (1972), and Peter Burger's Die Tranen des Odysseus (1993). In their own way each of these works transgresses the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, upsetting prior generic categories. The effect of these boundary-crossings is to challenge the notion of nonfictional narratives, particularly history and criticism, as more objective or truthful than fictional narrative. Drawing on the writings of Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra, Peter Gay, Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, Theodor Adorno, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Paul Ricoeur, I characterize the distinct methods fiction and nonfiction use to portray truths about human experience.; Taking each of the four works I examine as representative of a particular literary epoch, I attempt to characterize the ways in which the boundary separating fiction from nonfiction is historically determined. Beginning with premodernist aestheticism, then moving through modernism to contemporary, postmodernist thought, I demonstrate that authors may either disregard or embrace the conventions separating fiction from nonfiction, but that ultimately they illustrate the value of that dichotomy. |
