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NeMLA 2014 - April 3-6, 2014, Harrisburg PA Aesthetics of War: Poets and Poetry Around 1914 This panel proposes revisiting poets, poetry, and poetics of the pre-WWI and early war period to engage both with the works and the question as to whether literary history has paid due diligence to the pre-war period, or if there are systematic reasons for tending to marginalize German expressionism (and related literary movements of the time). Please send paper proposals to Thomas Herold at [log in to unmask] One hundred years after the outbreak of WWI, German Studies and canonization is mostly occupied with literature that interprets or critically engages with WWI after the fact: Be it Im Westen nichts Neues, Der Zauberberg, or Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften – WWI is always a observed with critical distance. On the other hand, while German Expressionism has become part of the canon and while the poets of the movement set a monument to themselves with Menschheitsdämmerung, poets, poetry, and poetics of the immediate pre-war era and the beginning of the “Great War” do not enjoy the same prominence in German Studies as the literature of post-war engagement. One potential reason may be politics (academia does not enjoy nationalism and, if at all, engages with Ernst Jünger, for instance, not because of but despite his politics); another reason may be quality (“Rilke is just better than August Stamm”); yet another reason may be historical and coincidental: the fact that many of these young poets were swallowed up by the very thing that inspired their writing: the war. This panel proposes revisiting poets, poetry, and poetics of the pre-war and early war period to engage both with the works and the question as to whether literary history has paid due diligence to the pre- and early war period, or if there are indeed systematic reasons for tending to marginalize German expressionism (and related literary movements of the time). Topics may include but are not limited to - Poets and poetry around 1914: Interpretations/readings of specific works - Aesthetics of war in Expressionist poetry - The politics of Expressionism: Nationalism or Aestheticism? - The politics of canonization: Political bias in literary historiography? ******************* The German Studies Call for Papers List Editor: Stefani Engelstein Assistant Editor: Olaf Schmidt Sponsored by the University of Missouri Info available at: http://grs.missouri.edu/resources/gerlistserv.html