Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-232) and index.
Contents:
Introduction -- Disease, death, and desire pre-1989: Christa Wolf's symptomatic GDR -- Bodies -- Christa Wolf's goodbye to socialism?: illness, healing, and faith since 1990 -- Retrospective imagination in post-GDR literature: gender, violence, and politics in medical discourses -- Haunted in post-Wall Germany: sickness, symptomatic bodies, and the specters of the GDR -- Conclusion -- Glossary.
Summary:
"The health-care system of the German Democratic Republic reflected the importance the socialist state assigned the health of both its citizens and of the metaphorical national body meant to represent and promulgate the nation's political vitality. Yet many East German literary writers depicted characters ailing and under medical care, and even after the country's dissolution in 1990, writers who had lived there continued to portray sickness and the GDR health-care system prominently in their fiction. This book offers an innovative reading of such texts, employing historical research on the GDR's health-care system and feminist and queer theory to get at socialism's legacy." -- Provided by publisher
Series:
Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.