Professor David Midgley

Research interests: 

• Literary Modernism, particularly in relation to developments in biological thought around 1900
• The works of Alfred Döblin

Recent research projects: 

The reception of Henri Bergson in the German-speaking world, with particular reference to his book L’évolution créatrice (1907; German translation 1912)

Published works: 

'»Schöpferische Entwicklung«. Zur Bergsonrezeption in der deutschsprachigen Welt um 1910’, Scientia poetica 16 (2012), 12-66.

‘The Early Fiction of Alfred Döblin.  The Short Story between Case Study and Parable’, in Manfred Engel and Ritchie Robertson (eds), Kafka und die kleine Prosa der Moderne. Kafka and Short Modernist Prose, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 2011, 209-23.

‘Metaphysical Speculation and the Fascination of the Real. On the Connections between Döblin’s Philosophical Writings and his Major Fiction before Berlin Alexanderplatz’, in Steffan Davies and Ernest Schonfield (eds), Alfred Döblin. Paradigms of Modernism, Berlin: de Gruyter 2009, 7-27.

Writing Weimar. Critical Realism in German Literature, 1918-1933, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000.

Arnold Zweig. Zu Werk und Wandlung 1927-1948, Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum 1980 (reissued as Arnold Zweig. Eine Einführung in Leben und Werk, 1987).

Further publications:

‘Der fremde Blick: Zur Verwendung hinduistischer Motive in Manas’, in Marion Brandt and Grażyna Kwiecińska (eds), Internationales Alfred-Döblin-Kolloquium Warschau 2013. Interkulturalität im Werk Alfred Döblins, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2015, pp. 199-228.

‘After Materialism. Reflections of Idealism in Lebensphilosophie: Dilthey, Bergson and Simmel’, in John Walker (ed.), The Impact of Idealism. The Legacy of Post-Kantian German Thought, vol. II: Historical, Social and Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013, 320-69.

‘The Subversive Appropriation of Poetic Forms: Georg Heym (1887-1912)’, Oxford German Studies Volume 41 (2012), No. 3 (Special Number: Expressionism), pp. 295-309.

‘Trauer, Erinnerung und nationale Identitätsstiftung. Überlegungen zu den Kriegsdeutungen nach 1918 auf deutscher und britischer Seite’, Historische Zeitschrift. Beiheft 54 (2011), Munich: Oldenbourg, 179-202.

‘Zwischen Anschauung und Idee: Phantasiebilder bei Alfred Döblin’, in Roger Paulin and Helmut Pfotenhauer (eds), Die Halbschlafbilder in der Literatur, den Künsten und den Wissenschaften, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 2011, 291-310.

‘The Absentee Prophet. Public Perceptions of George’s Poetry in the Weimar Period’, in Melissa Lane and Martin Ruehl (eds), A Poet's Reich: Politics and Culture in the George Kreis, Rochester, NY: Camden House 2011, 117-29.

‘“Zwei Hände Erde”: Brecht on Mortality’, in Robert Gillett and Godela Weiss-Sussex (eds), “Verwisch die Spuren!” Bertolt Brecht’s Work and Legacy A Reassessment (Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 66) Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi 2008, 261-75.

‘Looking beyond Satire in Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften’, Austrian Studies 15 (2007), 96-111.

‘Radical Realism and Historical Fantasy: Alfred Döblin’, in Karl Leydecker (ed), German Novelists of the Weimar Republic, Rochester, NY: Camden House 2006, 211-27.

‘Experiments of a “free spirit”. Musil’s explorations of creative morality in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften’, in Rüdiger Görner and Duncan Large (eds), Ecce Opus: Nietzsche Revisions in the Twentieth Century, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2003, 111-24.

‘The Poet in Berlin: Brecht’s City Poetry of the 1920s’, in Karen Leeder (ed.), Empedocles’ Shoe, London: Methuen 2002, pp. 90-106 + 262-63.

Edited volume: The German Novel in the Twentieth Century: Beyond Realism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1993.