Book Description
This work analyzes texts by contemporary Swiss writer Gertrud Leutenegger in regard to the interrelationship of literary freedom and social constraints by applying different discursive variants of literary discourse analysis. How do the enigmatic texts written in an idiosyncratic and unique style, filled with myths and codes of dream and life sequences relate to the Swiss environment? Are they just free associations and combinations constituting an esoteric utopia? Is Gertrud Leutenegger ortslos as Martin Roda Becher defines postmodern writers? Critical approaches of several schools of literary criticism; feminism, male gender studies, psychoanalysis, mythology, theory of style, linguistics, and sociolinguistics contrast the functional textual differentiations. A wide interdisciplinary need in literary projects is thus disclosed. Therefore, this volume is of interest for scholars of all branches of social and literary sciences. Unprecedented are the models of masculinity and the images of men derived from a first person singular narrative by a Swiss woman writer. She works through the ontological process of subjectivity reflected in the image of a patriarch governor and an Italian immigrant. The chapter on Swissness in the Text is of crucial importance concerning the categorization of German Literature and questions about minor literature. This socio-critical analysis shows that there is a transcendence between the writing subject-(author) and literature. Yet, the body can be retrieved from literature since das Herz muß im Körper belassen werden, als Sitz der Erkenntnis, as Gertrud Leutenegger says. All her texts are body writings; her words originate in the female body experiencing constraints in Switzerland.
