The Naked Truth

Viennese Modernism and the Body

Cloth $45.00 ISBN: 9780226669984 Will Publish May 2020

E-book $45.00 ISBN: 9780226695006 Will Publish May 2020

Viennese modernism is often described in terms of a fin-de-siècle fascination with the psyche. But this stereotype of the movement as essentially cerebral overlooks a rich cultural history of the body. The Naked Truth, an interdisciplinary tour de force, addresses this lacuna, fundamentally recasting the visual, literary, and performative cultures of Viennese modernism through an innovative focus on the corporeal.

Alys George explores the modernist focus on the flesh by turning our attention to the Second Vienna Medical School, which revolutionized the field of anatomy in the 1800s. As she traces the results of this materialist influence across a broad range of cultural forms—exhibitions, literature, portraiture, dance, film, and more—George brings into dialogue a diverse group of historical protagonists, from canonical figures like Egon Schiele, Arthur Schnitzler, Joseph Roth, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal to long-overlooked actors, including author and doctor Marie Pappenheim, journalist Else Feldmann, and dancers Grete Wiesenthal, Gertrud Bodenwieser, and Hilde Holger. Deftly blending analyses of popular and “high” culture and laying to rest the notion that Viennese modernism was an exclusively male movement, The Naked Truth uncovers the complex interplay of the physical and the aesthetic that shaped modernism and offers a striking new interpretation of this fascinating moment in the history of the West.

Table of Contents

Contents

Contents

Note on Translations
Introduction

1.         The Body on Display: Staging the Other, Shaping the Self
Science and Spectacle: “Exotic” Bodies on Display
Fictional Encounters? Peter Altenberg’s Ashantee (1897)
Somatic Utopias: Viennese Hygiene Exhibitions
Literary Life Reform: Peter Altenberg’s Pròdrŏmŏs (1906)
Nature and Culture on Stage

2.         The Body in Pieces: Viennese Literature’s Anatomies
Becoming the Blade: Vivisection as the Primal Scene
In the Dissecting Room: Arthur Schnitzler and Marie Pappenheim
Viennese Symptoms, Human Fragments: Joseph Roth’s Journalism
The Politics and Poetics of Viennese Corpses: Carry Hauser and Joseph Roth
Corpse as Capital: Ödön von Horváth’s Faith, Hope, and Charity (1932)

3.         The Patient’s Body: Working-Class Women in the Clinic
Finding a Voice: The Poetics of Pregnancy (Marie Pappenheim and Ilka Maria Ungar)
Egon Schiele in the Clinic
In the Women’s Clinic: Architecture, Gaze, Film
Speaking for Suffering Mothers: Else Feldmann and Carry Hauser
The Politics and Public Visibility of Proletarian Bodies

4.         The Body in Motion: Staging Silent Expression
Body Language and Crisis of Language
Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Power of Pantomime
Self and Other: Exploring Identity through Free Dance
Making Modern Dance Viennese
Celluloid Gestures and the Cinematic Body
The Worker’s Body: Modern Dance, Machine Culture, and Social Democracy

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

For more information, or to order this book, please visit https://www.press.uchicago.edu

Art: European Art

Culture Studies

History: European History | General History | History of Ideas

Literature and Literary Criticism: Germanic Languages

You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.