Melancholy has become a central theme of German literature since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This book traces the complex discourse of melancholy in contemporary literature in the work of Monika Maron, Christoph Hein, Arno Geiger and Alois Hotschnig with a focus on themes such as time, transcience, the body, gender and postmemory.

Anna O’ Driscoll received her PhD in German from University College Dublin in 2010 and has published on the topic of melancholy and GDR writers and artists. She is currently working as a freelance translator.

«Anna O'Driscoll reveals her talent for evoking the melancholy dead zones of the Austro-German literary landscape in her study .» C.E.Findley, Journal of Austrian Studies 49:1-2)

Contents: Melancholy subjectivity in Monika Maron’s and – as a neo-Romantic representation of melancholy – Christoph Hein’s : Art as refuge in the GDR – Divergent conceptions of male and female melancholy in – Arno Geiger’s : A Narrative? – A transgenerational perspective on melancholy loss in – Alois Hotschnig’s : Evidence of a pre-psychological melancholy paradigm – Manifestation of classical humoral theories as well as a Baroque sensibility in Hotschnig’s Inhaltsverzeichnis