Swiss American Historical Society Review
Keywords
Switzerland, Swiss history, European history
Abstract
The Swiss author Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) was a major figure within the late nineteenth-century German-language literary movement known as "Poetic Reali sm" ("Poetischer Realismus") . The very name of the movement suggested that " Poetic Reali sts" had retouched or revi sed reality by "poetici zing" it. Keller 's arti stic technique , which was influential on other writers of his time, transmuted outwardly observable actuality aga in and again into poetically coherent inner realities .1 This article explores how and why Keller found it artistically and socially beneficial to turn the factual contours of the Swiss Confederation essenti ally in side out-from fact to fiction-in the course of writing a thematically connected set of ten entertaining novellas.
Recommended Citation
Hacken, Richard
(2019)
"Gottfried Keller and the Fictionalization of Switzerland,"
Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 55:
No.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol55/iss1/2