Rezeption und Ideologie: Martin Walsers narrative Prosa in der BRD und DDR. (German text);

This dissertation explores and reassesses the reception of Martin Walser's narrative fiction. Since Martin Walser has been a controversial figure in German criticism, the wide range of dissent among reviewers can be used to pinpoint the dominant discourses in German literary criticism over almost four decades after World War II. Walser's work has been extensively reviewed in both Germanies. Thus, the dissertation examines the ideological impact of two opposing political systems on literary scholarship over time. By investigating the Walser reception in East and West Germany, one can perceive how a literary figure becomes an ideological icon and to what extent the nature of the dominant literary critical discourse depends on historical events extrinsic to literary issues.;The first chapter of the dissertation gives a historical synopsis of modern reception theories. Chapter 2 discusses the interrelation of scholarly and popular literary discourses by focusing on the literary marketplace in postwar Germany. Within this theoretical and historical framework, the body of the dissertation analyzes and categorizes the various ideological implications of the reception of Walser's narrative prose in newspapers and magazines in both Germanies from the 1950's to the present. The diachronic approach delineates the changes of critical assessments and their underlying criteria and demonstrates how literary criticism creates an image of an author and his work.;The dissertation provides an example of the institutionalization of an author and his literary work within the historical and ideological context of both postwar Germanies and proves that literary criticism has become an effective tool to maintain the critics' powerful position in today's literary marketplace. The conclusion demonstrates how Walser's reviewers have used aesthetic categories such as realism, narrative distance, formal balance, universality, genre conformity etc., to legitimate their ideological points of view. This leads to the perpetuation of a normative system, which, as shown in Walser's case, the critics use to support their own authority, rather than to discuss innovative literary techniques, styles, forms, and topics.