Call for Papers: Swiss-German Literature.
Swiss-German Literature.
Daniel Reizinger Bonomo (UFMG) - drbonomo@gmail.com
Valéria Sabrina Pereira (UFMG) - valeriasabrinap@gmail.com
Marcelo Rondinelli (UFMG) - rondinellimarcelo@yahoo.com
Submission of full texts: by August 16th, 2026.
For a long time, all literary works written in German were grouped under the label “German literature”, without much distinction regarding the particularities of each of the three main nationalities involved in the concept, namely Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. As a result, Austrian and Swiss literature were almost always subsumed under the generic idea of a German literature. While, on the one hand, this unity fostered ties within the same literary culture, on the other, it diminished the relevance of certain local particularities within that culture and created a hierarchy of influence in relation to language usage and the treatment of motifs and themes.
As a result, more recently, there have been new revisions that have sought to investigate the specificities of Austrian literature, for example, Eine Literaturgeschichte: Österreich seit 1650, by Klaus Zeyringer and Helmut Gollner (with Brazilian translation coordinated by Ruth Bohunovsky), and Swiss-German literature, for example, Schweizer Literaturgeschichte, by Peter Rusterholz and Andreas Solbach (eds.). To highlight one of the unique aspects faced by German-speaking authors in Switzerland, the later cites Friedrich Dürrenmatt's suggestive distinction between paternal and maternal languages: “The Swiss-German writer lives under the tension of speaking differently from how he writes. The mother tongue is soon joined by the ‘father tongue’. Swiss German, his mother tongue, is the language of feeling; German, his ‘father tongue’, is that of his intellect, his will, his adventure” (apud RUSTERHOLZ; SOLBACH 2007, p. XII, translated by the editors). However, speaking a dialect and writing in the so-called standard language of Hochdeutsch, or Standarddeutsch, as it is called in the Swiss variety, is just one of the many issues that authors of Swiss German literature are facing. Their own history and nature, their alleged political neutrality, their effective multiculturalism and its implications for the definition of a national identity, as well as the more recent context of migration, offer further topics for reflection and study in this field.
Finally, we must add the individual complexity of authors and works in the shaping of modern Swiss literature, including names such as Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Heinrich Füssli in the 18th century; Jeremias Gotthelf, Gottfried Keller, and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, during the Realism period; on the cusp of the 20th century, Carl Spitteler, who won a Nobel Prize (and was translated in Brazil by none other than Manuel Bandeira); Robert Walser, Hermann Hesse, and the Dadaists of Cabaret Voltaire, during the modernist period; Max Frisch, the aforementioned Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Peter Bichsel, not to forget avant-garde poet Eugen Gomringer, a precursor of concretism in the postwar period; in contemporary literature, Franz Hohler, Pedro Lenz, Christian Kracht, Lukas Bärfuss, Meral Kureyshi, among many others. Finally, we must not ignore phenomena such as the children's literature classics The Swiss Family Robinson and Heidi, by Johann David Wyss and Johanna Spyri, respectively; the bestseller by Pascal Mercier (pseudonym of Peter Bieri), Night Train to Lisbon, and the thrillers by Martin Suter. Thus, in this issue of Pandaemonium Germanicum, we welcome contributions that discuss the various authors, works, and subjects of Swiss German literature, which can be read from different perspectives. Articles on translation and reception of these authors in Brazil are also welcome, as are comparative texts.
References:
GOLLNER, Helmut; ZEYRINGER, Klaus. Áustria: Uma história literária – Literatura, cultura e sociedade desde 1650. Trad. Ruth Bohunovsky. Curitiba: Ed. UFPR, 2019.
MATT, Peter von. Das Kalb vor der Gotthardpost. Zur Literatur und Politik der Schweiz. München: Hanser, 2012.
PEZOLD, Klaus (org.). Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Schweizer Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1991.
RUSTERHOLZ, Peter; SOLBACH, Andreas (orgs.). Schweizer Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart; Weimar: Metzler, 2007.
