Abstracts / résumés
Abstracts / résumésKonferenz / Colloque International / Conference
Vielsprachigkeit,
Transnationalität, Kulturwissenschaften
Plurilinguisme,
Transnationalité, Sciences Culturelles
Multilingualism,
Transnationality, Cultural Sciences
(Wien / Vienne / Vienna, 6.-9.12.2001)
The aim of this presentation is to describe the difficulties and record the successes of Austrian writers, who for various reasons - usually political exile - moved to England and the USA, where they confronted the major problem of addressing new audiences in their own language. It is an ongoing problem that still occurs today among authors who for one reason or another prefer to live and write in a country other than their native land.
Few of the large number of Austrian writers facing this predicament ever learned English well enough to create books in it. Most continued to write in German and have the works translated for publication. The major exceptions to this procedure include Charles Sealsfield, Vicki Baum, Robert Flesch-Brunnigen, Oskar Kokoschka, Hermynia zur Mühlen, Robert Neumann, and Salka Viertel.
Of these writers the most remarkable success was achieved by Charles Sealsfield, to my knowledge the only 19th-century Austrian author to write and publish books in English. He will be the focus of this contribution because of the acclaim accorded to his three works in English: The United States of North America As They Are (1828), Austria As It Is (1828) and Tokeah and the White Rose (1829). Sealsfield was unknown in America when these books appeared, yet reviewers greeted them enthusiastically. Indeed,Tokeah was hailed as the "American Novel of the Year," with some praising it for surpassing the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. These works together with the translation of his book The Legitimist and the Republican. A Story from the Last American-English War (1833) brought Sealsfield the title of "Greatest American Author" in 1844.
The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of 20th-century
authors who wrote in English, some of whom produced books of lasting
success that have become part of American literature and film.
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