Andrea Erwig

Waiting Plots
Zur Poetik des Wartens um 1900
[Waiting Plots. On the Poetics of Waiting around 1900]

Periplous. Münchener Studien zur Literaturwissenschaft
Verlag Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2018, 420 pages
ISBN 978-3-7705-6252-7

The end of the 19th century marked the beginning of a time of waiting in European literature that stands in contrast to the paradigm of progress, acceleration, and productivity. Purposeful expectation is replaced by a persisting in transition that brings forth new dramatic and narrative forms.

Andrea Erwig traces the forms of depiction, unique temporalities, and phantasms of waiting in Maeterlinck, Rilke, Musil, and Freud, among others, while also analyzing waiting rooms and institutional techniques of power. In her study, literary waiting reveals its subversive side: early Modernity’s ‘waiting plots’ set themselves against the certainty of expectations and interrupt the linear progress of history to commit themselves to the indeterminate and the singular in reality.

From this perspective, the fin de siècle appears as a time of transition that both invokes and opposes finalities.

Media Response

23 Nov 2018
Warten – ein wichtiges Motiv in der Literatur um 1900

Radio talk with Andrea Erwig, in: RBB Kulturradio, 23 Nov 2018, 9.10 am (5:47 min)