Fractured Symbolism: Der Stechlin and The Golden Bowl.

Symbolism in literature; Fontane, Theodor, 1819-1898; James, Henry, 1843-1916; Golden Bowl, The (Book); Der Stechlin (Book); Fiction

Examines the construction of the symbolic orders in the novels The Golden Bowl, by Henry James and Der Stechlin, by Theodor Fontane. As a subject, the characters' symbolizing activities reflect the narratives' own intentions toward completeness, which are evidenced by the plot structures. The connection between heroine and narrator evolves from the recourse both have to the same object-symbol. The possibility of symbolism forms the crux of these, the last completed novels of two masters in the Realist tradition. While it is not new or surprising for Fontane and James to be linked with modernist writers who rely on symbolist techniques, the extent to which they use narrative to explore the process of symbolism itself has not yet been fully addressed. The retreat into symbolic forms on their figural level parallels a like motive in the narrative--a motive related to that identified by Peter Brooks as the narrative's attempt at mastery over a totality larger than itself. But while Brooks and others explore this motive as it is problematized in the linear mechanism of plot, another mechanism can be found to operate simultaneously--that of symbolic perception that both Fontane and James intend to unveil this feature in Der Stechlin and The Golden Bowl is signaled by the concrete references in their titles.