Kontingenz und Risiko

In this book, the author examines literature that portrays accidents, an aesthetic genre whose notable examples extend beyond texts by famous authors like Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. Technical disasters have provoked the collective imagination since the 19th century because of the new experience of contingency they create and the way they alter perception. This study argues that literature that depicts accidents creates a modern myth (1880s–1930s) which maintains an exciting connection with the mass media and discourses like thermodynamics and physiology. Its varied transformation is shown through three narrative genres. Starting from naturalism’s spheres of risk-taking (Hauptmann, Langmann, Zola, Alberti) to the avantgarde narrations of creation (Marinetti, Höch, Jünger, Hesse) and those texts of classical modernity (Mann, Kafka, Bierbaum, Musil) reflexive of modern media, the study offers a multifaceted insight into the narrative style, interpretation and the aesthetic and rhetorical processes involved in the literary depiction and mythicisation of accidents.