An article written by first-year assistant professor of German, Brett Martz, has been accepted for publication in what by 2012 will be known as the Journal of Austrian Studies (currently Modern Austrian Literature). The article, entitled “Reading Foreign Bodies in Musil’s Die Versuchung der stillen Veronika,” analyzes how the novella’s portrayal of the foreign body challenges communication for the novella’s characters, thereby serving as a literary device that reflects on the novella’s notorious difficulty for its readers. Thus the foreign body motif in the novella thematizes the problems that accompany attempts to present consciousness in fiction.
Brett Martz also recently presented a paper at the 2011 German Studies Association. The paper, entitled “Blends with Violent Ends: The Rosenmund, Eichkatzl, and Moosbrugger’s Struggle for Synthesis” applied Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s concept of “Conceptual Blending” to the visions and behavior of the clinically insane Moosbrugger, a figure from Robert Musil’s novel, The Man Without Qualities. It argued that Moosbrugger’s inability to accept conventional blends, along with their terms and concepts, is a hyperability that causes him to re-activate previously disregarded aspects of the input spaces that inform culturally entrenched blends. Because these newly imagined blends clash with conceptual norms, they lead to his confusion and ultimately beget violence.
Filed under: English & Modern Languages