The Multiple Perspective: Wilhelm Raabe's Third-Person Narratives of the Braunschweig Period

157 Pages·1981·13.74 MB·English

by  Irene Stocksieker Di Maio

THE MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE
GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
MONOGRAPHS
Wolfgang W.Moelleken, General Editor
Corresponding Editors
Dagmar Barnouw (Purdue University, West Lafavette)
Raimund Belgardt (Michigan State University, East Lansing)
Clifford A.Bernd (University of California, Davis)
Klaus H.Bongart (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo)
Henrich Brockhaus (Western Washington State College, Bellingham)
Donald G.Daviau (University of California, Riverside)
Ernst S.Dick (University of Kansas, Lawrence)
Jürgen Eichhoff (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
John M.Ellis (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Richard Exner (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Evelyn S.Firchow (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis)
Ingeborg Glier (Yale University, New Haven)
Reinhold Grimm (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Shaun F.D.Hughes (Harvard University, Cambridge)
Ray M. Immerwahr (University of Western Ontario, London)
Christiane Keck (Purdue University, West Lafayette)
Helmut Krausse (Queen's University, Kingston)
Herbert L.Kufner (Cornell University, Ithaca)
Robert E.Lewis (University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati)
Walter F.W.Lohnes (Stanford University, Stanford)
Karl Menges (University of California, Davis)
Herbert Penzl (University of California, Berkeley)
Helmut Pfanner (University of New Hampshire, Durham)
Carroll E.Reed (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Paul Schach (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
Peter Schaeffer (University of California, Davis)
Lester W.Seifert (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Hans Wagener (University of California, Los Angeles)
Donald Ward (University of California, Los Angeles)
Volume 11
Irene Stocksieker Di Maio
The Multiple Perspective
IRENE STOCKSIEKER DI MAIO
THE MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE
WILHELM RAABE'S THIRD-PERSON NARRATIVES
OF THE BRAUNSCHWEIG PERIOD
AMSTERDAM / JOHN BENJAMINS B.V.
1981
TO MY PARENTS
© Copyright 1981-John Benjamins Β.V.
ISSN 0378 4150 / ISBN 90 272 4004 3
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint,
microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my colleagues at Louisiana State University I wish to express deep
appreciation. Professors Thomas Di Napoli and Renate Bialy guided my work on
the original text, a doctoral dissertation, and Professor Selma Zebouni offered
invaluable suggestions. I am also grateful for Professor S. James Hintze's
encouragement during the preparation of the present manuscript and Dean
Henry L. Snyder's assistance in providing funds for the composer. Special
thanks are extended to Katherine Crochet for arranging for the materials,
Barbara Howell for proofreading, and Barbara Schexnayder not only for her fine
work in typing, but also for her patience and perceptiveness. This study reflects
my indebtedness to many Raabe scholars, to no one more than Professor
Volkmar Sander, now at New York University, whose inspired teaching
awakened my interest in German literature.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
I. DEFINING THE MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE 6
Point of View Theory 7
Theory on Multiple Point of View 25
Thef irst-person arative 26
Third-person narative 28
The Multiple Perspective 31
Comparison of the Multiple Perspective in
First-person and Third-person Naration 32
II. MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE IN THIRD-PERSON
NARRATIVES. RAABE'S BRAUNSCHWEIG WORKS 34
I. Structural Devices 35
A. Humor and Irony 35
1. Specific Irony 36
2. General Irony 37
3. Humor 38
B. Symbol 40
C. Quotations 42
1. Literary quotations 42
2. Non-fictional documents 4
3. Self-quotation 46
D. Time 47
E. Space 49
I. Narative Devices 51
A. Narator 52
1. Romantic Irony 52
a. Play with "omniscient" naration 53
b. Reflection on narative technique 54
c. Ironic treatment of the reader's expectations 55
d. Reader as part of work 56
e. Narator in characters' world 57
f. Parody 58
2. Naration 61
a. Exposition 61
b. Narative reflection 63
c. Corective coment 65
vii
Β. Characters 66
1. Erlebte Rede 66
2. Monologue 68
a. Reflective monologue 68
b. Reportorial monologue 68
3. Dialogue 69
4. Character quotes character 70
5. Letters 71
III. RELATIVITY IN THREE BRAUNSCHWEIG WORKS 77
Der Draumling 77
Das Horn von Wanza 92
Kloster Lugau 116
CONCLUSION 138
BIBLIOGRAPHY 141
viii
INTRODUCTION
Recent criticism of the works of Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910) notes
the gradual emergence of perspectival narration, a technique which
culminates in Raabe's works of the Braunschweig period (1870-1902). The
term "perspectival narration" (perspektivisches Erzählen) generally means
that a work contains multiple narrators, including, in a first-person
narrative, the narrating and the experiencing "I." The term "perspective" is
then often synonymous with the term "point of view"; therefore, the
multiple perspective in criticism usually means the multiple point of view.
After a systematic investigation of theory on point of view and narrative
technique in light of Raabe's narratives of the Braunschweig period, this
writer has concluded that the multiple point of view, as created by multiple
narrators, is but one way the multiple perspective is achieved. In the
German term perspektivisches Erzählen lies the possibility of expanding the
concept of multiple perspective to include not only multiple point of view,
but also the levels and dimensions added to a work by humor and irony,
symbol, quotations, and certain treatments of time and space. Therefore,
with the exception of the survey of critical theory in Chapter One, the term
multiple point of view is applied to those instances in which other critics or
this writer speak of multiple narrators specifically. The term multiple
perspective is used to describe the multiplicity of facets and levels in a
narrative, including the multiple point of view.
The development toward perspectival narration in Raabe's works
is not a linear one, for Raabe vacillates between this technique and more
traditional narration. Even within the works of the Braunschweig period
1
Hans Oppermann, Wilhelm Raabe: in Selbstzeugnissen und,
Bilddokumenten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag,
1970), pp. 96, 101-102, 110.
Fritz Martini, Deutsche Literatur im bürgerlichen Realismus: 1848-
1898 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1962), p. 681.
2 THE MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE
the multiple perspective is manifest in varying degrees not determined by
chronological order. The multiple point of view is already evident in Raabe's
first work, the lyrical Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse (1856 [1857 on the
title page]), for the narrator, Wachholder, allows five other people to
contribute to the narration. The first full-fledged presentation of a situation
by different first-person narrators is Drei Federn (1856), a work of the
Stuttgart period. In this work three characters enter their thoughts into the
same notebook at different periods. The former kind of chronicle, which in
terms of form was an isolated case during Raabe's early Berlin and Wolfen-
büttel period, proved to be the precursor of Raabe's perspectival first-
person narratives of the Braunschweig period.
In his study Erzähler und Leser bei Wilhelm Raabe, Eduard Klopfen-
stein correctly attributes Raabe's use of the multiple point of view to the
author's increasing suspicion of the third-person narrator who makes his
point of view absolute. According to Klopfenstein, the multiple point of
view is more fully developed in Raabe's first-person narratives of the
Braunschweig period than in the third-per larratives, because the
authorial narrator recedes most-indeed, is even eliminated-in the first-
person narratives. The following study seeks to demonstrate that the
presence of a third-person narrator need not, and frequently does not
detract from the multiple perspective. The narrator's presence adds yet
another dimension, or point of view, which either contradicts, relativizes, or
complements that of the characters. Furthermore, as Klopfenstein also
notes, the narrator relativizes his own position by disintegrating it in a play-
ful manner (Romantic Irony) and by feigning incompetence. If the
multiple perspective is central to Raabe's technique of the Braunschweig
period, and the third-person narratives outnumber the first-person narratives
by two to one in this period, then the third-person narrator would seem to
be significant for the multiple perspective. In this study it will become
evident that point of view is but one of the absolutes which have come into
question. Symbols which are traditionally universal become ambiguous, and
fixed phenomena, such as time and space, seem relative to the observer.
Although narrative technique is a central concern of the literary critic, it is
neither devoid of content nor divorced from theme. This study investigates
the manner in which the multiple perspective in Raabe's works reflects the
general disparities, lack of harmony, contradiction, and questioning of
absolutes which came about in the latter half of the nineteenth century in
2
(Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1969), pp. 156-157.

Klopfenstein, p. 157.