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‘IM BEWEGLICHEN UMGANG MIT DEN STÖRRISCHEN FAKTEN’: ATTITUDES TO GENRE IN FELICITAS HOPPE'S PRAWDA: EINE AMERIKANISCHE REISE (2018)

2019; Wiley; Volume: 72; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/glal.12236

1468-0483

Stephanie Obermeier,

Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies

ABSTRACT This study offers a critical introduction to anglophone German studies of Felicitas Hoppe as a prolific and experimental contemporary German author. As I show, although Hoppe can be productively analysed as a vocal contributor to questions surrounding the utility of generic descriptors such as the historical novel, autofiction, and travel writing, the combination of these issues with Hoppe's signature style, poetics, and intertextuality becomes problematic in the particular case of Prawda: Eine amerikanische Reise (2018). Acting simultaneously as a kind of hypertext to Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov's Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (1937) and as a platform for Hoppe's preoccupation with the Western canon, and with Johann Peter Eckermann's Gespräche mit Goethe (1836/48) in particular, Prawda consistently demonstrates Hoppe's poetics, but neglects the thematic content with which it purportedly engages, and fails to offer new insights into debates surrounding the contemporary novel and its genres.