Der Müll der Literatur

Readings on the literarization of waste and the littering of literature, which connect a penchant for useless details with the collecting reading of the completely useless. Waste has increasingly asserted itself since the last third of the 19th century. The objects and substances that are usually piled up in urban peripheries as mounds of trash do not escape literature either. It tells stories about them, allows its characters to interact with them, and relates the form and materiality of its texts to them. Why are literary texts around 1900 interested in such a formless object as waste? This study by David-Christopher Assmann seeks answers to this question. At its center are readings of waste passages in literature from the mid-19th century to the 1920s. What representational techniques do literary texts employ between realism and modernism to address their interest in discarded or thrown-away materialities? To what extent does the literature of the turn of the century participate in urban hygiene efforts to manage waste disposal? And with what consequences does a literary text observe itself as waste? The study advocates for a materiality-theoretical and socio-historical informed structuralism that allows for the examination of waste as a theme, process, and material, in short: as a text-material form of literature.