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.
Dr Davies would welcome proposals for postgraduate work in these fields. 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.
Consultation hours: Monday 11-12, Friday 1.45-2.45
Dr Davies is Programme Director for the MA in Modern Languages and contributes to MA units on Research Skills, The Rise of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Europe, European Literature of Ideas and Conflict and Culture: Theoretical Approaches. He teaches or co-teaches the following undergraduate options:
