At the very beginning of the 20th Century music was strongly influenced by “Wagnerismus”, but at the same time the intersemiotic outputs of the avant-gardes began to innovate music (atonality, dodecaphonism, politonality) in such an experimental way that eventually shaped postwar German literature and culture as well. This book highlights the semiotic and medial interfacing between music and German literature from the so-called “klassische Moderne” to nowadays. On the background of exemplary works on semiotic and language theories worked out by scholars belonging to both music studies and literary criticism, the essays of the book analyse the permeability and the dialogue between the two systems and medias in 20th Century’s musical and literary genres and in the works of Jakob Wassermann, Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann, Nelly Sachs, Franz Fühmann, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, and W.G. Sebald.weiterlesen