From: Mark Gruettner, Ph.D., Professor of German
I am pleased to announce the publication of my book Intertextualität und Zeitkritik in Günter Grass' Kopfgeburten und Die Rättin (Intertextuality and Social Criticism in Günter Grass's Headbirths and The Rat). On a personal level, I tried to somehow come to terms with issues that influence all of us in one way or another. It is the old paradox of how a civilization that has advanced so far, can produce such crises like environmental destruction, atomical, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction, millions of starving people living in absolute poverty, and the frustrating feeling that nothing significant is being done about it. Reading literature that deals with those problems makes you sensitive enough to ask why this is the case.
On an academic level, this book demonstrates how recent global threats have influenced the German writer Günter Grass. His insights are the result of extensive readings, as documented by a great number of references to other texts—"intertextual references". This analysis shows the connections among intertextual references and issues of broad significance in Grass's novels of the last decade. Theories by Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jonathan Culler, Gérard Genette, and Roland Barthes support the idea of intertextuality. It allows the opening up of the literay text by pointing to a complex network of textual relations. Thus, it becomes evident that literature participates in literary and nonliterary discourses.
The focus of this study centers on a specific type of intertextuality, i.e. on quotes and allusions to a work and its author. Such references can be found in each of Grass's works. However, the content, the form, and the function of this intertextuality have changed over the years. His novel Headbirths (1980) signifies the beginning of a new writing phase. For Grass, "Orwell's decade" has begun.
Grass's literary and artistic creations during the eighties consist of such works as Headbirths, The Rat (1986), Show Your Tongue (1988), and Dead Wood (1990). These works reveal a serious concern for the future of the world. Among the most important issues for Grass are problems like the destructive potential of the worldwide nuclear arsenal, the global consequences of the population explosions in the developing countries, i.e. starvation, disease, and poverty, and the alarming increase in environmental pollution. In his novel Headbirths, he incorporates Orwell's conception of "doublethink" to elaborate on the (still existing) threat of nuclear war. His (intertextual) critique reaches a climax in The Rat, where reports to the Club of Rome, an association of globally concerned scientists, and writings by former Nobel Peace Prize winner, Willy Brandt, turn out to be a major influence on Grass's novel.
The concerned author demonstrates the urgency of a higher ethical standard in dealing with today's global problems. An understanding of Grass's novels in "Orwell's decade" contributes immeasurably to that insight.
Personally, I hope that every major library will purchase my book which has been praised by reviewers as a very significant cultural study with a lot of historical depth and a detailed, scholarly analysis of Grass's works.