Abstract
This chapter investigates the production of nature in two novellas from Adalbert Stifter’s Studien: Brigitta and Abdias. I argue that both texts imagine an alternative Anthropocene reality that is presented as a more ethical parallel to nineteenth-century environmental degradation. The pastoralist vision in Brigitta expresses Stifter’s vision of an alternative Anthropocene most directly, whereas Abdias provides a more negative contrast. This chapter thus situates the moral and ethical reflections in Stifter’s narratives within the realities of the social production of nature that the texts portray, and demonstrates how social nature serves a key role in casting the texts’ didactic agendas in an ironic and critical light.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Alaimo, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana UP, 2010.
Angress [Klüger],Ruth. “Wunsch- und Angstbilder: Jüdische Gestalten aus der deutschen Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.” Kontroversen, alte und neue: Akten des VII. Internationaler Germanisten-Kongreß, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986, pp. 84–96.
Begemann, Christian. Die Welt der Zeichen: Stifter-Lektüren. Metzler Verlag, 1995.
Berendes, Jochen. Ironie - Komik - Skepsis: Studien zum Werk Adalbert Stifters. Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2009.
Berman, Russell. The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma. Harvard UP, 1986.
Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany. Norton, 2006.
Brande, Arthur. “‘Den Wald zu reinerer Anmut führen’: Die Aktualität Stifters aus landschaftsökologischer Sicht.” Adalbert Stifters schrecklich schöne Welt (Eine Koproduktion von Germanistische Mitteilungen und Jahrbuch des Adalbert-Stifter-Institutes), Adalbert-Stifter-Institut, 1994, pp. 143–51.
Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2001.
Castree, Noel. “Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics.” Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics, edited by Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, Blackwell Publishers, 2001, pp. 1–21.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.”Critical Inquiry, vol. 35, Winter 2009, pp. 197–222.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Penguin Books, 2009.
Doppler, Alfred. “Schrecklich schöne Welt? Stifters fragwürdige Analogie von Natur- und Sittengesetz.” Adalbert Stifters schrecklich schöne Welt (Eine Koproduktion von Germanistische Mitteilungen und Jahrbuch des Adalbert-Stifter-Institutes), Adalbert-Stifter-Institut, 1994, pp. 9–15.
Downing, Eric. Double Exposures: Repetition and Realism in Nineteenth-Century German Fiction. Stanford UP, 2000.
Feilchenfeldt, Konrad. “Brigitta und andere Chiffren des Lebens bei Adalbert Stifter.” Stifter-Studien: ein Festgeschenk für Wolfgang Frühwald zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Walter Hettche, Niemeyer Verlag, 2000, pp. 40–60.
Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford UP, 2008.
Helfer, Martha. “Natural Anti-Semitism: Stifter’s Abdias.”Deutsche Viertelsjahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 78, no. 2, 2004, pp. 261–86.
Hertling, Gunter. “Der Mensch und ‘seine’ Tiere: Versäumte Symbiose, versäumte Bildung. Zu Adalbert Stifters Abdias.”Modern Austrian Literature: Journal of the International Arthur Schnitzler Research Association, vol. 18, no. 1, 1985, pp. 1–26.
Holub, Robert C. “Adalbert Stifter’s Brigitta, or the Lesson of Realism.” A Companion to German Realism: 1848–1900, edited by Todd Kontje, Camden House, 2002, pp. 29–51.
Ireton, Sean. “Between Dirty and Disruptive Nature: Adalbert Stifter in the Context of Nineteenth-Century American Environmental Literature.” Colloquia Germanica, vol. 44, no. 2, 2011, pp. 149–71.
Irmscher, Hans Dietrich. Adalbert Stifter: Wirklichkeitserfahrung und gegenständliche Darstellung. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971.
“leben.” Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm, 1971.
Luke, Timothy. “On the Politics of the Anthropocene.”Telos, vol. 172, Fall 2015, pp. 139–62.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Das Kapital. 39th ed., vol. 1, Karl Dietz Verlag, 1962.
Metz, Joseph. “The Jew as Sign in Stifter’s Abdias.”The Germanic Review, vol. 77, no. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 219–232.
Meyer, Kelly Middleton. “‘Sohn, Abdias, gehe nun in die Welt...’: Oedipalization, Gender Construction, and the Desire to Accumulate in Adalbert Stifter’s ‘Abdias.’” Modern Austrian Literature: Journal of the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association, vol. 35, no. 1/2, 2002, pp. 1–21.
Morton, Timothy. Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Harvard UP, 2007.
Stifter, Adalbert. Brigitta: with Abdias, Limestone, and The Forest Path. Angel Books ; Dufour Editions, 1990.
———. Indian summer. Translated by Wendell W. Frye, 2nd ed, P. Lang, 1999.
———. “Preface to Many-colored Stones.” German Novellas of Realism, edited by Jeffrey Sammons, vol. I, Continuum, 1989, pp. 1–6.
———. Werke und Briefe: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe. W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1982.
Szerszynski, Bronislaw. “The End of the End of Nature: The Anthropocene and the Fate of the Human.”The Oxford Literary Review, vol. 34, no. 2, 2012, pp. 165–84.
Trachtenberg, Zev. “The Anthropocene, Ethics, and the Nature of Nature.”Telos, vol. 172, Fall 2015, pp. 38–58.
White, Richard. “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature.” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Co., 1996, pp. 171–85.
Wilke, Sabine. “Anthropocenic Poetics: Ethics and Aesthetics in a New Geological Age.”RCC Perspectives, edited by Helmuth Trischler, vol. 2013, no. 3, 2013, pp. 67–74.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Phillips, A. (2017). Adalbert Stifter’s Alternative Anthropocene: Reimagining Social Nature in Brigitta and Abdias . In: Schaumann, C., Sullivan, H. (eds) German Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene. Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54222-9_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54222-9_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55985-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-54222-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)