Utopie und Dystopie

The world will not stand for long, sings the shoemaker Knieriem in Nestroy's play Lumpazivagabundus (1833), and Karl Kraus once referred to Austria as a testing ground for the apocalypse. Dystopias, but conversely also utopias, permeate Austrian as well as European literature. In a series of contributions, this volume traces such crisis phenomena, but also hopeful ones, from the 18th to the 21st century. This creates a picture of a literature of modernity and postmodernity characterized by utopias and dystopias. Utopias, since Thomas More's Utopia (1516), are particularly widespread as state utopias and develop alternative models to current state formations. For all of them, it holds true that they could not have been conceived without a sense of possibility (Robert Musil) and thinking in terms of possibilities (Wilhelm Vosskamp). Dystopias often describe futuristic apocalyptic scenarios that have gained great popularity, especially since the turn of the millennium, due to multiple crises. Notably, readers, as Thomas Macho has pointed out, derive more subjective pleasure from apocalyptic scenarios than from utopian constructions. Contributions on Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Johann Nestroy, Arthur Schnitzler, Ödön von Horváth, Alfred Kubin, Thomas Bernhard, Péter Nádas, Fedor Ivanovič Panferov, and Elfriede Jelinek, among others, explore the titular thematic concepts. The volume is aimed at literary scholars, but also at non-Germanist readers who are interested in the phenomena of utopia and dystopia in Austrian and European literature.