Dr Steffan Davies
Sprechstunden: Wednesday 11-12, Friday 10-11
Room: 2.73
Lecturer
Tel: 0117-92-88798
Email: steffan.davies@bristol.ac.uk
Dr Davies joined the department in September 2007 after studying German and History at Oxford University and completing a DPhil on the figure of Wallenstein in German literature and historiography after Schiller. From 2005 to 2007 he was a Laming Fellow at the Queen’s College Oxford, dividing his time between Oxford and Berlin. He is on the Councils of the English Goethe Society and the Internationale Alfred Döblin-Gesellschaft.
Research
Dr Davies’s principal interests lie in the German literature and history of the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and in the interplay of literature, historiography and history. His doctoral thesis traced the influence of Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years War and drama Wallenstein on subsequent historiographical as well as literary interpretations of Wallenstein, analysing the figure’s role in the construction of German national and ethnic identity in the nineteenth century. Dr Davies has published articles and presented papers on other texts by Schiller and Goethe. A new project is examining the use of factual material in novels by Alfred Döblin (1878-1957), uncovering Döblin’s literary responses to the traumas of war and exile, and exploring the tensions in modernism between tradition and innovation, and between the author and the literary text. The project is currently focused on Döblin’s last novel, Hamlet oder Die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (1956).
Dr Davies is Programme Director for the MA in Modern Languages and would welcome contact from any prospective postgraduates. He is co-organising a course for UK postgraduates at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach at Easter 2012. He would also welcome contact in Welsh and on links between Wales and the German-speaking world.
Teaching
Dr Davies is teaching or co-teaching the following options this year:
- GERM 10013/23/33 Introduction to German Studies
- GERM 29011 Young Goethe
- GERM 22039 Literature and Politics, 1800-1871
- MODL 23021 Theatre and Performance
- GERM 32053 The Culture of Classical Weimar
- GERM 30001 German Language
- MODLM 2040 Advanced German
- MODLM 2035 The Rise of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Europe
- MODLM 2044 European Literature of Ideas
- MODLM 2043 Conflict and Culture: Theoretical Approaches
- MODLM 2045 Research Skills
Publications
Monograph
The Wallenstein Figure in German Literature and Historiography, 1790-1920, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 76 (London: MHRA, 2010)
Edited Book
with Ernest Schonfield, Alfred Döblin: Paradigms of Modernism, Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies, 95 (Berlin: de Gruyter and London: IGRS, 2009)
Book Chapters
‘Writing History: Why Ferdinand der Andere is called Wallenstein’, in Alfred Döblin: Paradigms of Modernism, ed. by Steffan Davies and Ernest Schonfield (Berlin: de Gruyter and London: IGRS, 2009), pp. 123-45
‘Geschichte Wallensteins: Ranke’s Problem of Narrative – and Schiller’s Solution?’ in Textual Intersections: Literature, History and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Rachael Langford (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), pp. 89-106
‘Schiller’s Egmont and the Beginnings of Weimar Classicism’, in Schiller: National Poet – Poet of Nations: A Birmingham Symposium, ed. by Nicholas Martin, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 61 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 123-38
Articles in Journals
'"Du wagst es, meine Worte zu deuten?" Unreliable Evidence on Schiller's Stage', Modern Language Review 106 (2011), 779-96
‘Goethes Egmont in Schillers Bearbeitung – ein Gemeinschaftswerk an der Schwelle zur Weimarer Klassik’, Goethe-Jahrbuch 123 (2006), 13-24
‘Goethe, Theatre and Politics: Götz von Berlichingen from 1771 to 1804’, Publications of the English Goethe Society 70 (2000), 29-45
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