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Elfriede Jelinek
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Elfriede Jelinek is a controversial Austrian novelist and dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. In the early 1960s she studied music composition and theater science, and by the early '70s was ... active in leftist politics. She began writing radio plays, and her 1974 play "When the Sun Sinks It's Time to Close Shop" made her famous in Austria and Germany. Jelinek's work has often caused controversy, especially in Austria, where she has been criticized for pointing to Austria's role in World War II fascism. Her work has also been described as "pornographic" for its frank depictions of sex and violence, but Jelinek's reputation as an overtly political writer has kept critics from denouncing her work as simply prurient. Her work is little known outside of Germany and Austria, but she is considered an influential writer and in 2004 she won the Nobel Prize for literature, only the tenth woman to do so. Her most famous books are Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1980) and The Piano Teacher (1983).
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Elfriede Jelinek, who was born in 1946 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, is the most verbally powerful writer in present-day German-language literature. Her works and public statements continue to provoke disparate reactions. In 2004 Jelinek received the Nobel Prize for literature, and this decision ... caused considerable controversy within the German-speaking sphere as well as internationally.
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In October 2004 Elfriede Jelinek has won the Nobel price for literature. The price was awarded "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power". She is the first Austrian writer to be honoured with a Nobel price for literature!
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Konzett's study focuses on the new literary strategies with which the Austrian writers Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek, and the late Thomas Bernhard engage their readers in critical self-perception. Each articulates a unique model of dissent, combining avant-garde and mainstream techniques of writing that cut across modes of literary discourse and reception. Their writings expose and attack conventions of pre-arranged consensus and harmonization that block the ongoing negotiations necessary for the development of multi-cultural awareness. Bernhard, Handke, and Jelinek question particularly Austria's mono-ethnic and naively accepted national heritage that allows for the unproblematic maintenance of tradition and an apologetic attitude toward the past. Konzett shows that each of the three writers poses the question of national dissent differently. Handke focuses on post-ideological voices that are suppressed in the account of the history of the marginal individual; Bernhard exposes a coercive climate of historical amnesia and national self-canonization; Jelinek confronts the increasing commodification of all cultural identity.
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Elfriede Jelinek and The Princess Plays includes an article on Jelinek’s changing position in the world of letters by Gitta Honegger, a leading Jelinek scholar and translator. Accompanying this major article is Honegger’s extended interview with the author; they discuss Jelinek’s aesthetic influences and ideas, what it’s like to win the Nobel Prize, and its implications for the writer. In addition to the first English-language publication of three short plays from Elfriede Jelinek’s Princess Plays, this issue of Theater includes Gitta Honegger’s extended and deeply personal interview with Jelinek, as well as Honegger’s article on her changing position in the world of letters since winning the 2004 Nobel Prize. The issue, which ... includes articles on France’s Théâtre du Soleil, offers a compelling portrait of Jelinek and a rare introduction to her provocative theater.
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Elfriede Jelinek was born in the alpine resort of Mürzzuschlag, but she grew up in Vienna. Jelinek's father, Friedrich Jelinek, a chemist, was of Czech-Jewish origin. He died in 1969 in a mental hospital. Jelinek's mother, Olga was from a well to do Catholic family; she died in 2000. Jenikek was the only child of her parents, who relatively old when he was born, her father being 46 and her mother being 42.
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Elfriede Jelinek