Überbürdung – Subversion – Ermächtigung

Around the year 1900, one can note a remarkable surge in literary texts dealing with the subject of school. So far, this boom has been perceived, but the body of texts has not been made accessible systematically from a perspective of discourse analysis and in a context of the history of knowledge. This study analyses, but also goes beyond canonical authors and texts in order to give a conception of the full scope of the genre and the reciprocal relationship that exists between the literary discourse on the subject of school and a whole range of other contemporary fields of knowledge. The process of transformation which the genre undergoes is portrayed with regard to three such interrelationships in particular: the role of 'Uberbürdung' – the contemporary discussion of the supposedly excessive physical and intellectual demands on pupils; forms of artistic subversion of the institutions' requirements and forms of parody of the still fledgling genre tradition; and finally, scenarios showing a transformation of pedagogical objectives into political ones. In consequence, the school emerges as a mirroring image – as an institution that helps the era of modernity to understand and come to terms with itself.



Dr. Gwendolyn Whittaker studierte Germanistik und Anglistik in Konstanz und Glasgow. Sie schloss ihr Studium mit dem Ersten Staatsexamen ab und wurde 2012 an der Universität Kon­stanz promoviert.