Gunter Grass's "Der Butt"

Gunter Grass's novel "Der Butt" is one of his most important and best-known works, and yet it has not received the critical acclaim enjoyed by his other novels, most notably "Die Blechtrommel". It is in many ways his most complex work, having at its centre a narrator in whom the past, his own past, spanning millenia of time through a bizarre procession of female cooks, is no less immediate than his fraught domestic present. It is a novel which demonstrates Grass's ability to hold in vivid balance a multitude of criss-crossing themes and figures. This volume of essays addresses that complexity. It is a collaborative venture, the result of a series of discussions during which key issues and techniques of the novel were explored. The 11 essays present individual perspectives whilst contributing to a general exposition which throws new light on Grass's artistry and on the interplay of history and sexual welfare which is at the heart of the novel.Table of ContentIntroduction; Ronald Spiers: The dualistic unity of Der Butt ; Joyce Crick: Future imperfect: Time and the flounder; David Jenkinson: Conceptions of history; Timothy McFarland: The transformation of historical material: The case of Dorothea von Montau; Hanne Castein: Grass and the appropriation of the fairy-tale in the Seventies; John J. White: "Wir h ngen nicht vom Geh nge ab": The body as battleground in Gunter Grass's "Der Butt"; Anthony Phelan: Rabelais's sister: Food, writing, and power; Peter Prochnik: Male and female violence in "Der Butt"; John Sandford: Men, women, and the "third way"; Michael Minden: Implications of the narrative technique in "Der Butt"; Philip Brady: "Aus einer Kurbishutte gesehen": The poems.