The intersection of the material and poetic economy in Gustav Freytag's 'Soll und Haben' and Adalbert Stifter's 'Nachsommer' (Austria).

摘要

In this dissertation, I have explored the intersection of the material and poetic economies in Soll und Haben and Der Nachsommer. The two novels diverge greatly in the ways in which they employ the economic in their narratives. However, in both of them, economic structures and forms of representation define their aesthetic principles. In my exploration of the two novels I have coined and used the word economopoetics to describe the different connections between economics and aesthetics and have demonstrated how this concept is relevant on three different levels, specifically as pertaining to content, representational issues, and as a literary strategy.; Freytag's novel is set in a bourgeois capitalist environment and explicitly thematizes business and economics. As part of his literary strategy, the author poeticizes the bourgeois economy. The principle of his economopoetics is dichotomization. By simplistically dichotomizing the material and poetic economies of the bourgeois and Jewish societies, Freytag marginalizes all systems that don't comply with the economopoetic ideals of the bourgeois economy.; Stifter's economopoetics works differently from Freytag's, because Stifter doesn't engage with the economic on the content level. Instead, he attempts to exclude it from his narrative, but in doing so, he manages to economize everything. The principle of total economization is the main economopoetic component in Der Nachsommer.; My interpretation of the two novels demonstrates how the main poetical strategies of the two novels, dichotomization (Soll und Haben) and total economization (Der Nachsommer), are defined by economic themes, structures, and forms. Although very different in their treatment of topics relating to business and economics, both novels employ economic thought in their narratives. The diverging patterns of economopoetics are central commentaries on their underlying realist aesthetics. One important finding of this dissertation is that in spite of money's apparent absence from the core content of some literary texts, structurally, it is difficult to avoid.; In conclusion, then, the study of economopoetics can be relevant to all literature, even that which does not explicitly thematize money and economics (such as Der Nachsommer). Economic organizing principles still inform and enrich the literary interpretations of such texts.