Anyone who has studied German in the last sixty years has had to pick up the narrow turquoise-blue ribbon and learn to distinguish between the “typical forms of the novel”. The author Franz Karl Stanzel, a professor in Graz, sorted epic literature according to authorial, personal and first-person narrative situations. “A boring theory,” said a disparaging review of the Times Literary Supplement, but “pedagogically useful”. It was precisely the simplicity of this group of characters that made them so successful. Stanzel’s teaching, expanded edition after edition, corrected, polemically enriched, but self-confidently defended against competition from Germany (Käte Hamburger, Jochen Vogt), France (Gérard Genette) or the USA (James Wood), was spread throughout Europe and also, like him proudly noted, translated into “two East Asian” languages.
On the death of Franz Karl Stanzel – Culture
