DIE THEMATIK VON SELBSTAUSLOSCHUNG UND SELBSTBEWAHRUNG IN DEN WERKEN PETER HANDKES. (GERMAN TEXT).

摘要

The critical view of Peter Handke's ideological point-of-view has been quite obscured; literary critics and scholars either have completely identified with his texts or, in their eagerness to pin him down to a certain Weltanschauung, failed to read his texts carefully. This dissertation attempts to read (along with) Handke text by text. Pains have been taken to read with as much consistency as possible so that certain covert ideological presuppositions and consequences of these texts will emerge, making a new critical departure from Handke possible.;An examination of Handke's theoretical writings will serve as the background for an analysis of some of his major works: Publikumsbeschimpfung, Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter, and Die linkshandige Frau. It becomes clear that, for Handke, literature is a means of overcoming man's self-alienation. For him it is important that literature bring into focus what is commonly and erroneously reflected as "natural," but which in fact is manipulated and constructed.;On the one hand, this intensifies the reader's own alientation because his mechanisms of perception are confounded. On the other hand, this alienation of an already alienated world will, according to Handke, enable the reader to come close to this world again; having become aware of the mediations which barred him from direct experience of the world, the reader is able to overcome these distortions. This paradox of "self-annihilation through self-preservation," and of "self-preservation through self-annihilation" may be summarized as follows. The unity of the world is possible, precisely because it consists of isolated elements. Relocated in the consciousness of the perceiving subject, these elements--the very "weight of the world"--tend toward weightlessness. Separated from everything and everybody else, one becomes incomparable, an individual who preserves identity by becoming anonymous. The subject, as sheer consciousness, becomes the center of a unified world.;In analyzing selected works, this dissertation attempts to trace the various ways in which these paradoxical notions could be realized. The play Publikumsbeschimpfung, itself a dramatization of the institution of the theatre and its mechanisms, necessitates an examination of the level of the play's reception. It will appear that this play, in its very self-contractions, is curiously self-fulfilling.;In Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter the tensions between self-annihilation and self-preservation informs the dilemma of the protagonist, who is a victim of the powers of both outer and inner worlds. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.