Ambientalismo e sperimentazione formale nella letteratura austriaca contemporanea

Das Wasser di Kathrin Röggla e paradies fluten di Thomas Köck

Abstract

In Austrian literature, nature has traditionally been present as a landscape considered an integral part of national identity. The myth of an uncontaminated scenic beauty and bearer of healthy values ​​was already questioned in the second half of the 20th century. In recent years, the new sense of responsibility towards nature goes hand in hand with the denunciation of global violence against the environment. The landscape disappears and conventional and anthropocentric narrative and theatrical forms are called in question. Contemporary texts, like Kathrin Röggla's Das Wasser(2022) and Thomas Köck's paradies fluten(2014), show a mix of formal experimentalism, environmentalist appeal, and catastrophism, in an attempt to shake the audience out of a passivity regarding climate change.