Chapter 31 - Sebald Scholarship

Summary

This essay provides an overview of literary scholarship on W.G. Sebald: the developments and trends as well as common themes and approaches. It highlights examples of existing scholarship that introduce Sebald’s life and work, discuss his literary criticism, and approach his works through a comparative lens. Special consideration is given to Sebald’s prose form, in particular the ethical implications of his way to combine fact and fiction. Finally, the essay suggests possibilities for future research that considers the unpublished materials (manuscripts, correspondence, and images) in Sebald’s literary estate, held at the German Literature Archive in Marbach, and that approaches his works via digital tools and methods (e.g., mapping, visualizing, network analysis, distant reading).