Confronting / Defining the Self

John A. McCarthy was Professor of German & Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University. His interests ranged from the European Enlightenment, to readership studies, the history of Germanics, Romanticism, the relationship of social history, philosophy, science, and law to literature. He edited Shakespeare as German Author: Reception, Translation Theory, Cultural Transfer (2018) and co-edited Taking Stock – Twenty-Five Years of Comparative Literary Research (2019). John A. McCarthy passed away in August 2022 during the preparation of this manuscript for publication.

Editorial Note


Part 1

Prolegomena

1 The Changing of the Guard?

1 Preamble


2 Asking the Right Questions


3 The Role of Comparative Literature


4 The Self


5 Book Presence in a Digital World


6 Readers and the Future of Reading




2 Forever Voyaging

1 Canon and Renewal


2 Individual Agency


3 Lost


4 Changing Constellations: Process


5 Excursus: Gaps




Part 2

Exempla

3 Determining the Self Madame de La Fayette, The Princess de Clèves (1678)

1 Past and Present


2 The Novel as Tragedy


3 Exposition and Development


4 Climax and Catastrophe


5 Signature Moments


6 Free Creation of Future Being




4 Broadening the Self The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

1 A Breath of Fresh Air


2 Plot and Structure


3 The Dark Side


4 ‘Myself Not Myself’


5 Werther’s Fatal Attraction


6 Compensation


7 Verselbsten / Entselbsten




5 Losing the Self Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857)

1 Overview


2 Things and Characters


3 Capturing the Essence


4 Deromanticization—Desacralization


5 Emma’s ‘Cousins’




6 Losing the Self Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)

1 A Preliminary Note


2 Remarks on Translation


3 A Realist in a Higher Sense


4 Mise en Scène


5 Liza: Dreams of Attachment


6 Making Sense of ‘Confession’ and ‘Literature’




7 Fragmented Self. The Prophet of Change Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)

1 Why Write?


2 The Total Economy of Life


3 Zarathustra—Post-Biblical Prophet


4 The Dancing Motif—The Higher Man—Self




8 Fragmented Self—Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)

1 A Philosophical Writer


2 Breaking with the Expected


3 Guilt—Shame—Tragedy


4 Self—Consciousness—Meaning




9 The Fractured Self Herrmann Hesse’s Steppenwolf (1927)

1 Adrift


2 Structure


3 The Game of Life—Learning to Swim—Learning to Laugh


4 Self


5 Magie des Buches




10 The Self and the Absurd Albert Camus, L’Étranger (1942)

1 The Background


2 Translators’ Notes


3 The Narrative


4 Indifference and the ‘I’




11 Defining the Self Anew Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959)

1 From Minimal to Magical Realism: Structure and Narrative Voice(s)


2 New Beginnings—Vergegenkunft


3 Narrated/Narrative Time


4 Translators and Narrative Voices


5 A Conclusion of Sorts




12 Epilogue Forever Voyaging … Toward Lucidity




Bibliography