Identificador: TDX:553
Autors: Schmähling, Klaus-Peter
Resum:
The thesis contains 546 pages and deals with satirical poetry in German language between 1871 and 1890 - a period so far widely neglected in anthologies, history books and scientific publications. It attempts to demonstrate that contrary to common opinion a very lively, widespread culture of satirical poetry did exist in these two decades, and that satirical poems at that time actually covered a wide variety of different and even quite individual satirical styles. Having chosen a concept of satire that followed the usual kind of definition as given in the encyclopaedias of the second half of the 19th century - i. e. satire understood as a kind of public mock-game and as such a combination of criticism and entertainment (chapter 2) - , a textual body of 134 satirical poems was established in order to get a textual basis for interpretation. Three quarters of the texts of this new anthology presented in the annex of the thesis either had never been published in books before (and was found in old newspapers and magazines) or is currently not available in other than antiquarian books.The main four chapters of the thesis describe the communication culture with satirical poems seen from different perspectives: Chapter 3 is about the reception of satirical poetry in these two decades. Contrary to popular belief satirical poetry played a more important role in public communication than ever before. Concentrating in the culturally leading cities of the time (Berlin, Vienna, Munich), but also very widespread in the small towns and every socio-cultural ambience, a multitude of satirical supplements or magazines existed never seen before as far as quantity and variety is concerned. While women were supposed to read other types of poetry, reading satirical poems undoubtedly formed an important part of the social life of men throughout all classes. As the individuals of the second half of the 19th century had to live under an intensified work pressure and a gradual deconstruction of old identity schemes, it became increasingly attractive for them to seek a shared, satirical laugh in one's peer group - transforming satire reading into a public event. This being especially true for socialist working class people, the government increasingly felt the need to try to suppress socialist satire by legal means during these two decades. But the more they pursued this fight, the more they provided their opponents with new textual weapons and thus contributed to the evident, spectacular rise of socialist satire during the Kaiserreich. Chapter 4 deals with the production of satirical poetry, revealing that in spite of its popularity it was not the kind of text authors used to focus on if they tried to create 'art'. Although many of them also wrote satirical poems to demonstrate their stylistic faculties, to earn a little extra money or to simply play the popular social role of making a witty contribution to a celebration, they, contrary to schemes of earlier and later times, tended to avoid including satires in their collected works Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the stylistic and thematic features of the poems. Due to its increased social function, socialist satire tends to get more and more aggressive between 1871 and 1890, whereas non-socialist satire seems to concentrate on improving its entertainment qualities. As far as satire styles are concerned, it becomes clear that satire in this period is far from being a mere imitation of Heine satire. On the contrary: The first two decades of the Kaiserreich must be regarded as the soil that created and developed many of the well known and highly esteemed 20th century satirical voices.
Repositori URV