Theodor Fontane

What happens when fashionable forms of unserious speech prove to be contagious, when they adulterate and weaken communicative spheres that rely on honesty, trust, and sincerity? Demonstrating how the tension between irony and avowal constitutes a central conflict in Fontane''s works, this book argues that his best-known society novels play out a struggle between the incompatible demands of these t...