Look abroad, Angel: concentric circles of Sehnsucht in the work of Thomas Wolfe

Abstract

This thesis explores Thomas Wolfe’s fiction through the lens of Sehnsucht, a German term for longing that serves a dual purpose. First, it links Wolfe’s career-long preoccupation with longing within a transatlantic exchange of ideas surrounding homesickness, nostalgia, and longing. Second, it reveals a deeply idiosyncratic form of longing present in Wolfe’s work, reconfiguring ideas around more familiar expressions of desire to reveal Wolfe’s underlying ontology of longing. This analysis reveals a new critical perspective on Wolfe that properly historicizes his work within its cultural context. Chapter One addresses Wolfe’s complex reception history, arguing that new technologies of modernism prompted a dramatic reconception of the idea of “culture” in the US. Chapter Two examines a particular formulation of “the South” operating within both Wolfe’s fiction and the strain of criticism that has sought to position Wolfe’s work as emblematic of a distinctly “Southern” literary tradition. Chapter Three explores Wolfe’s crucial encounters with German culture, situating Wolfe’s Sehnsucht alongside the Heimat of the German Romantics. Chapter Four addresses his German reception and influence on German writers. Exploring the specter of Nazism, his story “I Have a Thing to Tell You” is also reconsidered. This thesis diverges from previous studies by exploring this story’s improbable German language translation during WWII, by exiled Jewish novelist Rudolf Frank. Chapter Five argues that any analysis of Wolfe must consider the profound and enduring effect his writing had on authors as diverse as Jack Kerouac and Stephen King. This chapter also charts Wolfe’s impact on the works of Australian authors Christopher Koch and Dorothy Hewett, and explores his profound influence on Ray Bradbury. My central contention is that Thomas Wolfe should not be seen as a neglected Appalachian novelist, but as an important—fundamentally global—figure of American literature.