Words Chiseled into Marble

Contents: Meyer's means of representing artworks in verbal narratives are analyzed narratologically. His "art-historical realism", his stance as translator, and his ambivalence towards the cultic function of the arts are studied.

The Author: Beth L. Mugge-Meiburg received her Ph.D. in German Studies from Stanford University, and her B.A. in English and German from Iowa State University. She has taught at Southeastern Massachusetts University.

"Dr. Mugge-Meiburg's fresh appreciation of Meyer's evocation of the European past through its works of art convincingly situates his narratives at the crossroads of the Nietzschean age where a symbolist approach to history begins to displace older historicism (and where) writers from Hawthorne to Proust rediscover the mythological roots of their cultural world. She speaks with engaging clarity to a wide spectrum of readers on such questions as fictionality, archetypal experience, the truth status of art works, and the modernist shift." (Gerald Gillespie, Stanford University)
"This is an intellectually imaginative study that will interest readers of Meyer as well as scholars concerned with the aesthetics of realism, representation, and the intersection of literature and the visual arts. Mugge-Meiburg ably points out issues in Meyer's works that are germane to contemporary critical discussions." (Russell A. Berman, Columbia University)
"This volume is a welcome experiment in probing aesthetic boundaries and in productively borrowing conceptual questions from other disciplines for the study of literary texts. The book's insights stem perhaps above all from Mugge-Meiburg's agile and genuinely interested close readings of Meyer's prose in which various novels and novellas are read against each other or occasionally against other contemporary texts from literature or cultural history. These insightful readings in themselves make this scholarly Contribution worthwile." (Kirsten Belgum, Monatshefte)
"...the author, a highly imaginative critic, is a very careful thinker with a solid background in art history, literary criticism, and German cultural studies. Her erudition is impressive and her clear, nondogmatic presentation of her findings is engaging." (Gail K. Hart, The German Quarterly)
"The work presented here is a fine-tuning of our understanding of Meyer's prose narratives." (Deborah S. Lund, Seminar) "Mugge-Meiburgs Abhandlung stellt...einen beachtenswerten