Reseña

Elfriede Jelinek (1946) is an Austrian writer who has excelled primarily as a novelist and playwright. She has also cultivated essay and poetry, and translated from English. She is also known for her social activist facet and her commitment to the feminist movement. Her figure received international recognition especially after the award of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel jury highlighted her linguistic expertise in the creation of narrative voices flows and counterparts, as well as the criticism of social stereotypes deeply anchored in our society, such as the role given to women. Apart from the Nobel Prize, Jelinek has been awarded the main literary prizes in German language, such as the  Büchner's and Heinrich Böll's. 

Justificaciones

• One of the most important voices of contemporary literature in German language, linked to the avant-garde postwar movements in Vienna and Graz.
• Her impact on public and critic is huge.
• She was awarded the Nobel Prize (2004) and the most prestigious literary prizes in the Germanic field.
• Her novels The piano teacher and Lust have been made into films with great success.
• She stands out as a playwright and narrator, and has cultivated essays, poetry, translation, film scripts and opera lyrics. She has been innovative in all the genres she has cultivated.
• Her dramatic work is revolutionary in a formal sense: the characters and dialogues disappear altogether; she writes long lines of text (she calls them textual surfaces) mixing voices and quotations without interruption.
• In her work, especially that of her youth, she incorporates mass culture, consumer literature and pop aesthetics.
• Her works address political and economic corruption, especially in Austria, the drama of Syrian refugees, the war in Iraq, racism, the power and influence of the media, as well as their capacity for manipulation, or the situation of women in contemporary society.
• Activist for the recognition of Austria's active participation in the crimes of National Socialism.

Biografía

Jelinek began her training in the music field and was destined to be a virtuoso on different instruments. The pressure and the maximum demand to which she was subjected, especially on her mother’s side, made her give up this career. This aspect is present throughout her literary work and especially in her best-selling book The Piano Teacher (1983).      

With a Jewish father, who managed to escape Nazi persecution, Jelinek always saw in the father figure someone with exceptional abilities who in the historical circumstances in which he lived, under the National Socialists, was condemned to ostracism and concealment in order to survive.  
Elfriede Jelinek's literary beginnings must be linked to the avant-garde movements in post-war Austria that kept alive the rich tradition of experimental literature. It is related to the more progressive literary groups in Vienna and Graz. 

In her experimentation, the mixing of inspirational sources plays a fundamental role: Jelinek is deeply interested in the consumer cultural products (such as comics, entertainment novels, advertising) and philosophy. Thus, to a more or less high degree depending on the case, her works are a hybridization of these heterogeneous sources. 
Her early work is closely linked to pop aesthetics and the breaking of conventions. A sample of this is her novel Bukolit (1968). In the 1970s she leans towards a type of literature where social and feminist engagement are more evident: two works are highlighted, the novel Les amants (1975) and the dramatic piece What happened when Nora left her husband or The Pillars of Society (1977). 

In the 1980s, she wrote two of the works that will open for her the doors of popularity in the Germanic world and international acclaim. These are the novels The Piano teacher (1983), which was made into a film several years later  by  Austrian director Michael Hanecke with the same title (2001), and the novel Lust (1989), where she explores female sexuality in a very unorthodox manner, breaking all kinds of taboos. 

Throughout the 1990s she seems to be orienting her production towards drama, exploring new ways of writing. Little by little, the characters and theatrical notes will disappear from her work to end up imposing what critics have called "textual surfaces", large blocks of text in which the author mixes voices from different backgrounds. In addition, she gives theatre directors full power to stage their texts as they wish, taking advantage of the parts  that  most interest them.  

Jelinek is usually inspired by texts from classical Greek literature that serve her to address issues of the strictest current relevance . Examples of this type of writing include The Princesses' Dramas (Der Tod und das Mädchen) (2002), Bambiland (2003) Winter Journey (2011) and The Supplicants (2014). The themes she deals with in these last plays range from the Iraq war to the tragedy of Syrian refugees in the Mediterranean, to political corruption. 

Jelinek's work has been awarded the Nobel Prize (2004), and she has received the most prestigious literary prizes in the German-speaking world, including the Heinrich Böll Prize (1986), the Büchner Prize (1998) and the Kafka Prize (2004).      

Obras

Bibliografía

 Dagmar C. G. Lorenz (2007). Keepers of the Motherland: German texts by Jewish women writers. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 251–252. 
Wodak, Ruth (19 January 2009). Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh University Press. 

Several authors (2007). “Dossier XI Ciclo Autor: Elfriede Jelinek”. Primer Acto,  núm, 318, p. 7-105.

Montesinos, Sara (2017). “Pròleg”. Dins: Jelinek, Elfriede.  Els desemparats  Manresa: Tigre de Paper, 13-17. 

"Obscene Fantasies": Elfriede Jelinek's Generic Perversions". University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved  on 5/12/ 2020. 

Villanueva, Marc (2022). “Pròleg”. Dins: Jelinek, Elfriede. Viatge d’hivern  Barcelona: Biblioteca Sala Beckett, 7-24

Wikipèdia. (Retrieved on 09/01/2023

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek's website. (Retrieved on 09/01/2023)

https://www.elfriedejelinek.com/

Website of the University of Vienna's Elfriede Jelinek Information Center.  (Retrieved on  09/01/2023). 

https://ifvjelinek.at/en/information-centre/

https://malostratos.org/portfolio-item/elfriede-jelinek/ (Retrieved on  09/01/2023)

Website of the NGO Comission for the investigation of violence against women. (Retrieved on 09/01/2023) 

Enfoque Didáctico

Her texts and film adaptations of some of her works can be worked on: Universal Literature, Social Sciences, Tutoring, Philosophy and Ethical values, Audiovisual Education, in compulsory secondary education.  

Her dramatic work and opera librettos can be worked on in the secondary Theatre optative, in schools or dramatic art institutes. 
It is worth taking into account in the subject of Music and in Music studies for their musical training as a concert pianist and organ performer  and the close relationship of Jelinek's work with music. She plays with the words in a manner similar to Bach's fugues. She is an admirer of Schubert and some titles of her works demonstrate this. 

Documentos