Dialogue and Narrative Design in the Works of Adalbert Stifter

Brigid Haines focuses on the crucial interplay between dialogue and
narrative in Adalbert Stifter's works and relates this to their overall
structure. Stifter, a conservative and often didactic writer, is nevertheless
shown to present a complex view of reality which incorporates subjective and
sometimes subversive voices. In Der beschriebene Tännling the
characters' utterances relativize the narrator's apparently objective account,
while in the Bildungsroman Der Nachsommer one subjective voice
succeeds in calling into question the validity of the tightly-woven rhetorical
creed on which the novel is based. Stifter achieved a more open form in his
final novel, Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters, which articulates honestly
his own doubts about the adequacy of human communication and understanding.