Abstract

This investigation of Walter Benjamin's theory of narrative follows his philosophical development chronologically from the Ursprung book to the Geschichtsphilosophischen Thesen, presenting the argument that in these years Benjamin developed the model of a narrative which gains its redemptive force from its historiographic content as well as from its non-linear form. The discussion begins with Benjamin's notion of the Baroque allegory as an instance in which the poet's disruptive effort to thwart conventional understandings of reality and history by transcending the concepts of immediacy and totality directly effects the fragmentary form of this literary device. The second chapter focusses upon the change in Benjamin's praxis as an author of narrative prose, the Denkbild, the semi-autobiographical narrative that integrates his notions of allegory, surrealism and historiography as it appears in Einbahnstrase and Berliner Kindheit. The third chapter turns toward Benjamin's theoretical writings on narrative, above all in the essays Der Erzahler and Der Autor als Produzent, and his notion of the Brechtian defamiliarization effect. Benjamin's convictions about the revolutionary potential of narrative fiction are seen as the product of his increased sense for the implications of materialist thought for historiography and narrative. The final chapter finds that in the Thesen, Jetztzeit emerges as the form of a redemptive narrative-as-history. Like the Denkbild, Jetztzeit is a disruptive, non-linear narrative, juxtaposing apparently unrelated images in an effort to represent reality critically. By anchoring it in the history of labor, Benjamin now provides political guidelines for the reader's awakening critical consciousness