The aesthetics of everyday life: An analysis of morality in the novels of Guenther de Bruyn.

摘要

This study attempts to broaden the scope of the analysis of social critique postulated in Gunter de Bruyn's work by exploring its moral dimension. De Bruyn's novelistic work is situated within a moral dimension that forms the tension between inherited bourgeois values, the political and aesthetic dictates of socialist ideology in the GDR and de Bruyn's characterization of a critical morality. Through the analysis of the value hierarchies and moral decision-making of the characters in de Bruyn's novels, this study highlights the tension between these competing, though sometimes complementary, moral dimensions.;This author was particularly interested in analyzing the critical potential, e.g. the critical morality, manifest in de Bruyn's novels. The proving ground for such a critical morality is in everyday life. Agnes Heller's theories of everyday life and morality prove especially useful in analyzing de Bruyn's aesthetics of everyday life.