In addition to the useful agenda-setting and contextualizing introductory pieces by the two editors, this volume presents 12 essays, mostly by US-based scholars. Despite the escalating volume of publications analysing the work of the highly controversial Austrian writer and intellectual, Elfriede Jelinek, there is still only a very small handful of monographs and edited volumes on her work available in English. Matthias Konzett and Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger thus deliver a new, much needed, anthology of critical work.
Dagmar Lorenzs piece on ideology and criticism in Die Ausgesperrten is very convincing in positing Jelineks novel as incorporating feminist literary answers to Klaus Theweleits earlier publication, Mnnerphantasien (1977). Rebecca Thomas tackles Jelineks two earliest novels, wir sind lockvgel, baby! (1970) and Michael. Ein Jugendbuch fr die Infantilgesellschaft (1972). The texts themselves are opaque and diffi cult to fathom without media-theoretical knowledge and an awareness of the relevant pop-cultural contexts. Thomas explains how Jelinek reflects back to society its own infantilizing structures. Kathleen Komar covers possibly two of the best-known and widely translated early feminist texts, Die Liebhaberinnen (1975) and Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Sttzen der Gesellschaften (1978). Edna Epelbaum furnishes an incisive analysis of Elfriede Jelineks Politics of the Burgtheater. The larger part is given over to the later short Burgtheater (1982) continuation drama Die Erlknigin (1999), and to insights that inform both works and the politico-aesthetic differences between them. Using ideas from Canetti, Adorno, Horkheimer and Ruth Beckermann, Epelbaum interprets Jelineks undead Burgtheater protagonistactress.
Michaela Grobbel argues for more attention to be granted to Jelineks 1996 play, Stecken, Stab und Stangl. She demonstrates most persuasively that this is much more than a political play about the wave of xenophobic attacks in Austria at the time. Stecken functions as a form of modernist mnemonic technique (p. 149) and performs its own metacritical refl ection on the functioning of memory. Barbara Kosta analyses Jelineks interventions into contemporary Austrian politics, using the more recent short play, Das Lebewohl (2000), drawing out parallels that Jelinek puts to good effect between her intertext, Aeschyluss Oresteia, and the confl icts of modern-day Austria. Nancy Erickson maps out Jelineks dialogue with other intertextual material from Celan and Heidegger in her play In den Alpen (2002). Erickson helps the Jelinek reader to understand the authors strategy of integrating Celans Conversations in the Mountains (1959), the latter functioning as a kind of contrapuntal voice in her writing. This contribution offers a stimulating assimilation and development of theories of memory and explains how Jelineks writing deploys dialogic practices to counter Austrian, historical amnesia. Maria-Regina Kecht provides confused or failing readers of Jelineks magnum opus, Die Kinder der Toten (1995), with something of a toolkit for unlocking the complexities and reading pleasures of this densely intertextual novel. She offers stimulating new insights, for example, into Jelineks borrowings from Jewish tradition. Kechts analysis provides ample material to support her plea not just for a closer reading of the text, but for re-readings of Jelineks polyphonous writing.
Jelineks theorization of the body is traced by Helga Kraft, who looks at a number of works, including the Prinzessinnendramen (2003), but also Totenauberg (1999), Das Lebewohl, and shorter much lesserknown texts such as Krper und Frau. Claudia (2001), and A Mothers Song (2004). Krafts rich and wide-ranging readings have much to offer, too, on Jelineks engagement with the prototype, mediatized, Austrian male body, whether in the form of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jrg Haider. Karl Ivan Solibakke amply substantiates his claim that Jelineks most accessible work, Die Klavierspielerin (1983), has been somewhat underestimated. He draws out more of the musical discourse so central to the novel and posits the protagonists frozen adherence to musical tradition as a manifestation of her disempowerment and socialization both musical and sexual. Solibakke draws on Adorno to help position Jelineks deconstruction of Viennese musical traditions. He expands on Jelineks affinities with Bachmanns Malina and extrapolates productive analogies with and allusions to Wedekinds Lulu.
Willy Riemer and Sunka Simon round off the volume with pieces on film adaptations. Riemer considers some of the differences between novel and fi lm versions of the piano teacher material and illustrates the ways in which Hanekes screenplay and cinematography capture some of the central themes of the novel (La Pianiste, dir. Haneke, 2001). Simon chooses a number of key scenes to demonstrate how Werner Schroeter disregards Jelineks intensifi ed re-writings of Bachmann in her Filmbuch for the 1990 fi lm of Malina. Clearly there is fascinating and rich material here too for the Jelinek scholar.
Konzetts Preface to the volume is excellent. It uses the major theoretical contexts to situate Jelineks work for the non-specialist including feminist discourses, the historical and national contexts, the Nobel-prize canon, Jewish writing, and avant-garde versus mainstream culture. One might, however, argue with the editors perhaps unintentional equation of the international reader with the Englishlanguage reader. They endeavour to provide much needed information for the international reader (p. 7) but are fully aware of the vast body of scholarship in German and the growth in publications in other languages on this most high-profi le of writers. A stricter and more uniform editorial policy on quotations and translations would have proved more useful to the non-Germanist, English-language reader and provided a fi llip to those teaching or researching Jelinek in comparative literary circles. This is a minor quibble, however, and does not detract from the high quality of scholarship collected here.
The present volume will prove a valuable anthology of critical work for anyone interested in Jelineks intriguing oeuvre.
