Die Arbeit stellt sich in den Kontext von Untersuchungen, die aus der Debatte zwischen F.R. Leavis und R. Chase um die unterschiedlichen Traditionen der englischen und der amerikanischen Erzählliteratur hervorgehen und sie ergänzen. Sie widmet sich einem Thema, das in den zusammenfassenden Studien zum frühen amerikanischen Roman bisher übergangen wurde: Anhand ausgewählter Texte von Brown, Poe und Melville, die in der Regel als fehlerhaft abgetan wurden, werden u.a. Fragen der Kombination von Erzählsituation und Erzählstrategie unter Einbeziehung des Schreibaktes untersucht. Es wird der Versuch unternommen, diese Texte als Ausdruck von antinomischen kompositorischen Strategien zu begreifen, mit denen sich diese Autoren gegen literarische Konsonanzerwartungen ihrer Zeit durchzusetzen versuchten und damit Aspekte des amerikanischen Romans der Gegenwart vorbereiteten.

Die Arbeit macht es sich zur Aufgabe, ein neues Instrument zur Interpretation der schwierigen Lyrik des amerikanischen Dichters Wallace Stevens zu entwickeln. Ausgehend von der Rolle real gesehener Negativität in der äusseren Realität sowie der Negation als sprachlichem Mittel im Gedicht, wird der Begriff des Utopischen, wie er als Denkform von Ernst Bloch ableitbar ist, auf das Konzept der «supreme fiction» von Stevens übertragen. Damit wird zum ersten Mal eine einheitliche Sehweise für zentrale Momente von Stevens' Werk ermöglicht.

J. Horner: The Medium Is the Message ? New Venues for Canadian Poetry in English Canada – D. Cooley: Feminism in Contemporary Canadian Poetry – B. Sentes: Charm Schools : Modes of Petitio Benevolentiae in Contemporary Canadian Poetry – M. Martín: Identity and Language in American Experimental Poetry : The Editorship Venture – M. Brito: Editing Little Magazines of American Poetry: From Poetry for Minorities to Voices of Acceptance – D. Büscher-Ulbrich: The Poet/Poem as Agent Provocateur : Sounding the Performative Dimension of Amiri Baraka’s “Somebody Blew Up America” – M. Pfeiler: Remediating The Making of Americans : A Twenty-First-Century Poetry Film in the Context of Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Poetry Films and New Media – J. Novak: “Lip Up Fatty!” – Marketing Live Poetry as Popular Culture – S. Sorensen: John K. Samson, Poet Laureate of Winnipeg Rock – M. Oguchi: The Power of Multiplication. A Defense of Poetry in the Age of Hazy Identity – M. Mitsutani: Oral Readings and the Strange State of Poetry in Japan – G. Banita: Poetry and Collective Grief: The Popular Turn to Lyricism after 9/11 – M. Peterfy: Between Liberal Push and Sentimental Pull: American Poetry and the Forty-fourth American President – K. Martens: Poetic Progress as Poetic Regress?

von Klaus Martens (Herausgeber, Autor, Vorwort), Paul Hjartason (Autor), Arlette Warken (Autor)

The present volume contains papers presented, in somewhat different form, at the University of Saarbrücken's international conference "Pioneering North America: Mediators of European Literature" (April 24-26, 1998) on interrelated aspects of the mediation of European literature in North America and of some of the authors, institutions, media, and other agents involved in it. The emphasis is on case studies, divided into four different thematic categories. Part One contains different approaches to Felix Paul Greve / Frederick Philip Grove and the crucial role of the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. Part Two concentrates on seven other "Mediators of Culture," from Djuna Barnes to Paul Auster. Part Three, entitled "The Other and the New," presents a broad spectrum, from the impact of Derrida on American literary criticism to an analysis of the transformation of foreign patterns, themes and signs according to the needs of different cultural contexts. Part Four closes the collection with a number of fascinating insights regarding questions of mediation in "Literature and the Other Arts." Since much of America's modernist and postmodernist international cultural and literary impact has its origins in the diversity of European literatures and cultures, the convener of the conference and present editor feels that the time has come to rediscover and reexamine those influences and to see what has happened to some European cultural "goods" in their transatlantic transfer and, often enough, in their return home in different guises.

Der Herausgeber Klaus Martens, Professor of English & American Studies at the Universität des Saarlandes, is the author of several scholarly books, among them studies of Wallace Stevens (1980), the American Novel (1986), Longfellow Translations (1989), Frederick Philip Grove (1997) and, most recently, the editor (with Jutta Ernst) of the F.P. Greve-André Gide correspondence (1999). He is also a widely published poet and translator.

by Frederick Philip Grove (Author), Klaus Martens (Editor)

Frederick Philip Grove aka Felix Paul Greve (1879-1948) was a well-known Canadian novelist and essayist of international reputation with a previous career as a prolific German translator and novelist. In 1927 – during the creative years which spawned such classics as Over Prairie Trails, Settlers of the Marsh, A Search for America, and Our Daily Bread – Grove’s beloved daughter Phyllis May died of a ruptured appendix at the age of not yet twelve years. This tragedy prompted the composition of the poems selected from the manuscripts and edited for this volume. The poems and the occasional accompanying commentaries by the author afford rare and touching insights into Grove’s fascinating personality often thought remote and inaccessible. Many of the poems, photos and facsimiles contained in the present volume have never been published before in the present or any other form. An introductory essay and notes by Klaus Martens, the editor, discuss the texts and their contexts. Klaus Martens (*1944), the author or editor of many scholarly and literary books and essays, is a professor of English and North American literature and teaches at the Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany. Four of his books deal with the life and work of F.P. Grove aka Felix Paul Greve, among them the much acclaimed Translated Lives: F.P. Grove in Canada and Europe (2001). A new book, Over Canadian Trails: F. P. Grove in Selected Letters and Documents, is forthcoming. Martens has also published several books of poetry and his poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies. His latest volume, Die Fähre. Ein Abgesang, will appear in 2006. As a literary translator, he edited and (co)translated editions and other major work by, among others, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, Char-les Simic, Dylan Thomas, and Derek Walcott.