On Aura in Literary Work, Discretion for Reader and Mystery of Form on the Example of Siegfried Lenz’s A Minute’s Silence (2008): Between Bestseller and Poetology
On Aura in Literary Work, Discretion for Reader and Mystery of Form on the Example of Siegfried Lenz’s A Minute’s Silence (2008): Between Bestseller and Poetology

Summary/Abstract: Siegfried Lenz’s novella (2008, English edition 2009) has not only been appreciated by literary crit-ics, but also turned out to be a great bestseller. The novella is a frequent subject of research analysis,especially in terms of its location in the tradition of German and world novella writing. This diversityof reception is astonishing and presents an interesting phenomenon. The novella tells a banal lovestory, but through an intentional silence and a series of intertextual tropes it also creates mysteri-ousness. The analysis proposed here is based on Walter Benjamin’s notion of “aura” in the 1930s.From today’s point of view, this concept requires a few additions, primarily from the perspective ofsystems theory. As it turns out, this concept can be applied both to the content of the novella andto the strategy of literary criticism, as well as to explain the role of form and context in the personalperception of the text.

• Details
• Contents