Invisible dangers : the Presentation of Modern Environmental Threats and the Anthropocene in Contemporary German Literature

Abstract

This dissertation project examines how contemporary German literary texts depict modern environmental threats that are characteristic for the new age of the Anthropocene. Joining the larger conversation in environmental literary studies, and the Environmental Humanities in general, this project focuses on how written narratives overcome the visual obstacles that are a significant part of the environment and its current perils. Divided into thematical chapters, the dissertation analyzes narratives that deal with climate change (Ilija Trojanow, Liane Dirks), the nuclear threat after the catastrophe in Chernobyl (Christa Wolf, Gudrun Pausewang), and extinction (Marlen Haushofer, Max Frisch). The fourth and closing chapter summarizes the narrative characteristics evident in the German texts and compares them to the distinct aspects in Anglophone literary texts (Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver). This concluding, comparative analysis demonstrates that the depiction of the environmental hazards is not only specific to literature, but peculiar to a specific culture.My analysis identifies three characteristics that accompany the depiction of invisible environmental threats in contemporary German literature: First, literary texts have transformed into hybrid narratives that resemble the conditions of the environment as neither solely natural, nor urban, nor technological; instead, they can be regarded as a mesh in which countless influences interact and intersect. The boundaries of literary genres have become less stable as more and more texts include the features of several generic literary traditions, most prominently, travel, autobiographical, and disaster writing. The emergence of these hybrid literary texts affects their presentation of place and time within the narratives. For instance, in order to show the slow progression of environmental threats, these texts frequently make use of analepses in order to highlight the hazardous developments in the environment over time. Second, the first-person-narrators become the stories’ focalizers who are depicting the literary plot through their highly subjective lenses. These human individuals from whose perspectives the texts are told are in most cases ordinary people with no scientific background or deeper understanding of the environmental threat. Similar to their readers, they are only witnesses of the changing climate or the nuclear contamination of their home’s environments. Therefore, they document their inner personal thoughts and attempt to describe what is happening, even though it might not be perceptible to their human senses. Additionally, these texts are often arranged in the form of written reports that resemble traditional diaries, hence strengthening the highly personal character of these texts. Third, as the environmental threats remain mostly invisible and imperceptible to these focalizers, they employ language to describe what remains hidden to them. Here, they use established and familiar words and expressions that capture and compare the environmental dangers to everyday occurrences and events. This strategy involves the semantic broadening of individual terms, as well as metaphors and analogies.