The narrator's tale: Christa Wolf and the reader in the text.

Abstract

This dissertation examines, first, the early life and writings of Christa Wolf, and second, three major narratives, with the goal of showing how narrative strategies evolve in response to a set of historical conditions. It offers an update on knowledge of Christa Wolf, her writings, and the reception of her work, as well as an explanation of Wolf's success with a literary style of ambiguity and ambivalence. Wolf developed an ambiguous double language in response to a specific set of political and historical conditions. The device of the narrator as reader in the text anticipates the hopes and fears of implied readers. This narrator is thereby responsible for introducing questions and doubts about her "subject" without taking a position or implying that the author has one. In the first three descriptive historical chapters, an analysis of Wolf's early political book reviews sketches a picture of the author as "parteiliche Leser" and critic. After Wolf abandoned this first career, her early narrative writing was influenced by ideological beliefs and patterns (Moskauer Novelle, 1961; Der geteilte Himmel, 1963). This comprehensive study traces the evolution of Wolf's writing from the early didactic reviews and ideological novels to the later dialogic narratives which have won the author such acclaim (Nachdenken uber Christa T.; Kindheitsmuster, 1976; and Kassandra, 1983). Through an analysis of the literary device of the reader in the text, I demonstrate the function of the narrator in anticipating the reception of the work and document the historicity of specific narrative strategies.