Ruling Power, Ethnic Differentiation and Literary Depiction

The main purpose of the planned research project is to gain deeper understanding of the processes of cultural symbolism in the context of Austria-Hungary and the political interrelationship of its constituent `peoples`. The project will examine the decades between the Compromise of 1867 and the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, and Austrian and Hungarian literature of this epoch will provide its cultural medium. It seems appropriate to study in a limited way writings from the inter-war period as well, in order to put the cultural effects of this `collapse` into a new perspective - that of nation-forming and nationalism. The widely held stereotype of a multicultural Empire will be critically examined in the current context of an eastward enlargement of the European Union. The applicability of interdisciplinary methods will be tested, as developed in Departments of English and Cultural Anthropology; as will be methodologies in the fields of memory and recollection, intertextuality and comparative imaging as they relate to the literature and culture of the chosen period. A further related area of examination is the extent to which the power relationships of that time shaped the images of native and foreign cultures. On the one hand, this ethnic differentiation within a polyglot Empire and its symbolic forms can be seen as a means of exercising political power; on the other, a creative impetus, a process of cultural and political emancipation can be identified, which has continued in Europe to this day. The intention of the research project is to place the literatures of Austria and Hungary, as well as literary and cultural magazines in the Monarchy from 1867-1918, for the first time in a wider frame of reference. As a point of comparison, projects during this time which applied to the whole monarchy - the `Kronprinzenwerk`, the World Exhibition and educational curricula - will be examined for their symbolic importance.