Narration in the German Novelle: Theory and Interpretation

The Novelle is a characteristic German literary form, easier to recognize than to define, except as a brief novel or a long short story. The main body of this book is devoted to interpretative essays on individual Novellen. In a sense they all illustrate one central problem: the relationship of the narrator to his story, and the importance of this relationship for its interpretation. Professor Ellis begins with an analytical chapter which faces the problem of defining the genre, using an approach derived from conceptual analysis. The individual studies are of works by Kleist, Tieck, Hoffmann, Grillparzwe, Keller, Storm, Hauptmann and Kafka. This is a book which will help students and scholars to categorize and criticize an important genre, and it may well serve as an introduction to the whole study for the English-speaking reader.