TY - JOUR

T1 - Embodying achievement

T2 - Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, and authorship as a competitive sport

AU - Braun, Rebecca

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - This article engages with the criticism levelled at late twentieth- and early twenty-first century literary prizes in German-speaking Europe. It sets out how comments on the literary industry from contemporary authors and media commentators draw explicitly on the vocabulary of sport, and considers how this feeds into a long-standing discourse on literary prizes and literary value. I examine the notion that the competitive element shared by both sport and neo-capitalist society has undermined the value of literature as a serious intellectual endeavour, and I look at the different ways that Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek have engaged with these ideas in their various public expressions of authorship. Both authors not only engage directly with the problems posed by an image- and personality-obsessed society in their reflections on authorship, but also use both their own bodies and the larger body of literature they symbolically represent to argue for the ongoing social relevance of literary pursuits.

AB - This article engages with the criticism levelled at late twentieth- and early twenty-first century literary prizes in German-speaking Europe. It sets out how comments on the literary industry from contemporary authors and media commentators draw explicitly on the vocabulary of sport, and considers how this feeds into a long-standing discourse on literary prizes and literary value. I examine the notion that the competitive element shared by both sport and neo-capitalist society has undermined the value of literature as a serious intellectual endeavour, and I look at the different ways that Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek have engaged with these ideas in their various public expressions of authorship. Both authors not only engage directly with the problems posed by an image- and personality-obsessed society in their reflections on authorship, but also use both their own bodies and the larger body of literature they symbolically represent to argue for the ongoing social relevance of literary pursuits.

KW - Authorship

KW - Elfriede Jelinek

KW - Thomas Bernhard

KW - Sport

KW - Competition

KW - Celebrity

KW - Literary prizes

U2 - 10.5699/austrianstudies.22.2014.0121

DO - 10.5699/austrianstudies.22.2014.0121

M3 - Journal article

VL - 22

SP - 121

EP - 138

JO - Austrian Studies

JF - Austrian Studies

SN - 1350-7532

ER -