The aesthetics of passage: The imag(in)ed experience of time in W. G. Sebald and Peter Handke

This dissertation focuses on how specific narratives and aesthetic images of contemporary German and Austrian literature can probe philosophical concepts of time and space. Traditionally, space is imagined as possessing characteristics of stasis, exteriority, and representation, and time is associated with interiority and fleetingness. This premise is tested on Thomas Lehr's novel 42. Drawing on the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and Henri Bergson this inquiry traces the conceptualization of time and space as complimentary parameters of experience. I argue for a different spatial imagination which offers innovative ways of mapping time within the literary or artistic medium. In the works of Peter Handke, Jan Peter Tripp, and W.G. Sebald, there are effective attempts to ease space and time out of an immobilizing chain of connotations which made them appear as binary opposites. The study considers how space can evoke dynamic passage through the use of visual material and experiences. I propose "heterochronicity" as an interpretive tool to create a conceptual unity between temporally disjointed elements: the term denotes a representational practice that the authors and the painter seek to adopt as a method of perception. It relies on intricate structures of repetition, association, and quotation. In W.G. Sebald's Die Ringe des Saturn, heterochronicity is rendered productive for the project of postmemory. Furthermore, this inquiry investigates how heterochronicity as a method of perception might serve to locate the evocative potential of space. Using Peter Handke's Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and Der Bildverlust as examples, I argue that the "in-between," a metaphorical site comparable to Martin Heidegger's notion of "passage," marks a visual conflation of temporal and spatial experience.