Late Europeans and melanchology fiction at the turn of the millennium

"In an account informed by Benjamin and Nietzsche, Ian Ellison explores the melancholy of late modernist fictions by Patrick Modiano, W. G. Sebald and Antonio Muñoz Molina. These epigonal fictions cross the threshold between fiction and history and are gathered here as works of detection which emphasize the pathos of their own epistemological failure. Although Ellison acknowledges that these novels communicate the exhaustion of European culture and the irreconcilable violence of its past, notably against its Jews, he proposes that a rejuvenation of the future is still possible. This book is a fresh and adeptly theorised work by an emerging scholar in comparative literary studies." --Richard Robinson, Associate Professor of English, Swansea University, UK This book is the first comparative study of novels by Patrick Modiano, W. G. Sebald, and Antonio Muñoz Molina. Drawing on many literary figures, movements, and traditions, from the Spanish Golden Age, to German Romanticism, to French philosophy, via Jewish modernist literature, Ian Ellison offers a fresh perspective on European fiction published around the turn of the millennium. Reflecting on what makes European fiction European, this book examines how certain novels understand themselves to be culturally and historically late, expressing a melancholy awareness of how the past and present are irreconcilable. Within this framework, however, it considers how backwards-facing, tradition-oriented self-consciousness, burdened by a sense of exhaustion in European culture and the violence of its past, may yet suggest the potential for re-enchantment in the face of obsolescence. Ian Ellison divides his time as a DAAD PRIME postdoctoral research fellow between the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, their Paris School of Arts & Culture, France, and the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. This is his first book This book is the first comparative study of novels by Patrick Modiano, W. G. Sebald, and Antonio Munoz Molina. Drawing on many literary figures, movements, and traditions, from the Spanish Golden Age, to German Romanticism, to French philosophy, via Jewish modernist literature, Ian Ellison offers a fresh perspective on European fiction published around the turn of the millennium. Reflecting on what makes European fiction European, this book examines how certain novels understand themselves to be culturally and historically late, expressing a melancholy awareness of how the past and present are irreconcilable. Within this framework, however, it considers how backwards-facing, tradition-oriented self-consciousness, burdened by a sense of exhaustion in European culture and the violence of its past, may yet suggest the potential for re-enchantment in the face of obsolescence. Ian Ellison divides his time as a DAAD PRIME postdoctoral research fellow between the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, their Paris School of Arts & Culture, France, and the Goethe-Universitat in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. This is his first book Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements Contents About the Author Chapter 1: The Late, the Melancholy, and the European Literary Lateness in Europe From Literary Lateness to the Melancholy of History European Fiction Chapter 2: Detecting Lateness in Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano Memories and Tensions Lineage and Palimpsest Bricolage and Brocanterie Light and Shadow Absence and Emptiness A Dark Prison Chapter 3: Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald: A Late Fairy Tale Granular Novelties Modern and Romantic Lateness Artists and Ruins Fortresses and False Worlds Underworlds and Thresholds Bearable Survival Chapter 4: Exiled Lateness in Sefarad by Antonio Muñoz Molina Endings and Epigraphs Artefacts of Lateness Lateness and Liminality The Fantasy of Nostalgia Homelands and Erasure Difference and Compromise Chapter 5: The Event Horizon of European Fiction Whither ‘European’ Fiction? Consolation and Defiance Event Horizon Bibliography Primary Secondary Websites Index