The Poetics of Passage Christa Wolf, Time, and Narrative

Following German writer Christa Wolfâ (TM)s death in December 2011, the scholarly interest that her work had generated over four decades now culminates in the question of her literary and cultural legacy. Throughout her long writing career, Christa Wolf often pointed to generational differences, and asked questions about historical experiences specific to the periodâ (TM)s contemporaries. The Poetics of Passage discusses the experience of time and history, and their representation as two of the late authorâ (TM)s guiding concerns. Considering Wolfâ (TM)s critiques of Anna Seghersâ (TM) work, Heike Polster develops a framework for understanding the poetic construction of time in Wolfâ (TM)s texts. Furthermore, the writerâ (TM)s critical engagement with memory, history, and the writing process is formulated into a poetics of contemporaneity, or â oeZeitgenossenschaftâ , that Polsterâ (TM)s study outlines as Wolfâ (TM)s poetological response to the ontological questions of timeâ (TM)s passage.