Gottfried Keller

Gail Hart (University of California, Irvine)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.2: German-language Writing and Culture: Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, 800-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born 19 Jul 1819
Died 15 Jul 1890
Activity 1839-1890

Places

Born in Switzerland
Active in Switzerland

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet

Resources

Keller's Works

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Keller is best known as one of the leading practitioners of Poetic Realism, a nineteenth-century German-language and Scandinavian prose style that sought to retain the “poetic” values of fiction in the face of an often more cynical socio-politically engaged European Realism. Literary Realism in general is widely understood as “the combination of elements [that] leads the reader to believe that the text has a mimetic relationship to the world” (Robert Holub,

Reflections of Realism

, Detroit 1991, p. 16). In Keller's case, this combination involves an avoidance of the fantastic (if not the improbable), and a deep emotional precision or psychological realism that endeared his work to Freud, who made frequent use of it in his essays and case studies. The typical conflict in Keller's…

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2043 words

Citation: Hart, Gail. "Gottfried Keller". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5452, accessed 23 November 2024.]