Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Comparative Literature

First Advisor

Agnes Mueller

Abstract

The biographical and thematical overlap between the literature of Austrian authors Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, and Swiss writers Max Frisch and Fleur Jaeggy, is established in literary scholarship. However, similarities in the role Alpine spaces play in their works remain unaccounted for. The Alps represent a cultural and geographical boundary between linguistic identities and international borders. Protagonists across this dissertation’s three chapters face internal crises, prompting them to move to “zones of seclusion.” Within these “zones of seclusion,” characters spark discussions of collective memory even if they are isolated themselves. These peripheral locations force recollection, often on collective memory, in a manner that urban locations cannot for the characters. This collective memory usually refers to Austrian, Swiss, or German culture, but could also be the world at large and how we in the modern era reflect on past traumas. Moreover, nostalgia for a home or for the serenity of idyllic Alpine beauty is an overlap in the works of this study. “Zones of seclusion,” setting the rural post-War Austria and Switzerland at center stage, offers a novel analytical approach to the study of post-war Austrian and Swiss Literature. Bachmann, Bernhard, Frisch, and Jaeggy implement “zones of seclusion” in their literature—the Alpine backdrops functioning as necessary landscapes to conjure collective memory.

Rights

© 2026, Alec Lee Parry

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