In her novels such as Flammenwand and in her Covid-19 novel, Marlene Streeruwitz demonstrates in masterly fashion how inner worlds can be accessed, how feelings can be made visible. Literature as a represention of emotions has a long history, with which Marlene Streeruwitz engages critically while questioning its contemporary relevance. What does literature mean in the times of Trump, lockdown and a pandemic? What role does language and power play? 'I aim to find out on which sentences and word fragments a fate hinges.'
Through her lectures on poetics delivered in Frankfurt and Tübingen, and elsewhere, Marlene Streeruwitz set standards. And in Koblenz in spring 2021, she opened the recently established Joseph Breitbach lectureship on poetics, the lectures of which are collected in this volume. Marlene Streeruwitz ist 'an extraordinarily important and politically prominent voice.' (Quoted from Preis der Literaturhäuser)
