Sebald's Vision
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- $54.99
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- $54.99
Publisher Description
W. G. Sebald's writing has been widely recognized for its intense, nuanced engagement with the Holocaust, the Allied bombing of Germany in WWII, and other episodes of violence throughout history. Through his inventive use of narrative form and juxtaposition of image and text, Sebald's work has offered readers new ways to think about remembering and representing trauma.
In Sebald's Vision, Carol Jacobs examines the author's prose, novels, and poems, illuminating the ethical and aesthetic questions that shaped his remarkable oeuvre. Through the trope of "vision," Jacobs explores aspects of Sebald's writing and the way the author's indirect depiction of events highlights the ethical imperative of representing history while at the same time calling into question the possibility of such representation.
Jacobs's lucid readings of Sebald's work also consider his famous juxtaposition of images and use of citations to explain his interest in the vagaries of perception. Isolating different ideas of vision in some of his most noted works, including Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz, and After Nature, as well as in Sebald's interviews, poetry, art criticism, and his lecture Air War and Literature, Jacobs introduces new perspectives for understanding the distinctiveness of Sebald's work and its profound moral implications.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a series of close readings, Jacobs perceptively analyzes how W.G. Sebald's books have represented, and sometimes obscured, the author's exacting worldview. During Sebald's relatively brief career (he only published four works of fiction before his death in 2001), he was able to achieve an astonishing amount of his artistic vision for German postwar literature. Jacobs moves chronologically through most of Sebald's works, starting with the long poem After Nature and then going on to the novels The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Austerlitz. She also examines his nonfiction and essays, as well as major interviews Sebald gave at several points in his career. Her examination finds that Sebald confronted the horrors of the 20th century indirectly, through citations of paintings, photographs, and other artworks, rather than head on. That being said, Jacobs shows that Sebald did not remain neutral in historical matters, but reserved a strong moral judgment for those who evade the truth. The book does not give much sense of the greater literary or cultural context to Sebald's work. Nonetheless, it will leave serious readers with plenty to contemplate regarding Sebald's aesthetic and moral insights.
