Susan Bernofsky

This project focuses on the Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser: the first full-scale on Walser in English in over 35 years, and the first to combine analysis of the work with biographical narrative. Rather than allowing what is known of Walser’s biography to shape the presentation of his work, as one often finds in Walser criticism, this study develops themes derived from each of Walser’s four extant novels (the child; poverty and power; madness; art's promise of redemption). The central focus will be ideas about smallness and insignificance, crucial themes in Walser’s work that lie at the heart of the fundamentally ironic stance that marks him as a modernist.