Disturbing the Metaphor: Performance and Medial Presence in the Fiction of Elfriede Jelinek and Günter Grass

Abstract | Abstract

In this article, I want to discuss the way metaphors take form as diegetic actions in Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher (1983) and Günter Grass’s Too Far Afield (1995). In these texts, the reader must literally picture what metaphorical language usually only conceptually refers to. Both authors confront their readers with disturbing actions that are felt to be significant in some way; they resist straightforward interpretation and rather provoke affective reactions. This deliberate disturbance of metaphorical language can be understood as medial presence effects. They foreground the mediality and materiality of language and literature. The way literature performs and functions as a medium is made visible and perceptible.