Dorrit Cohn (9 August 1924 – 10 March 2012) was an Austrian-born scholar of German and Comparative Literature whose work centered on the formal analysis of narrative fiction.

Life

Dorrit Cohn was born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

in 1924. Her family left Austria only a few days before the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

in 1938. She immigrated to the United States with her family in 1939, attending the

Lycée Français The Agency for French Education Abroad, or Agency for French Teaching Abroad, (french: Agence pour l'enseignement français à l'étranger; abbreviation: AEFE), is a national public agency under the administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. She studied Physics (AB, 1945) and Comparative Literature (AM, 1946) at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

. She started graduate work in Comparative Literature at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

and resumed it after an 11-year hiatus, earning a Ph.D in German from

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

. Her dissertation (basis of her 1966 book) was on

Hermann Broch Hermann Broch (; 1 November 1886 – 30 May 1951) was an Austrian writer, best known for two major works of modernist fiction: '' The Sleepwalkers'' (''Die Schlafwandler,'' 1930–32) and ''The Death of Virgil'' (''Der Tod des Vergil,'' 1945). ...

's 1930-32 novel '' Die Schlafwandler''. She taught at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

from 1964 before moving to

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in June 1971, where (as one of the first women professors with tenure) she taught Comparative and German Literature as the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature. She retired in 1995, and her final years were spent in

Durham, North Carolina Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County, North Carolina, Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County, North Carolina, Orange County and Wake County, North Carol ...

Work

Dorrit Cohn's main work was in

narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...

. Her most prominent work, ''Transparent Minds'' (1978), studies how characters' consciousnesses are reflected in fiction in a variety of first- and third-person works, mostly from the 19th-century Realist and 20th-century Modernist traditions. Her work in this area was closely related to that of

Gérard Genette Gérard Genette (7 June 1930 – 11 May 2018) was a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of ''bricolage ...

and Franz Stanzel, with both of whom she had productive exchanges about the best way to analyze how consciousness is presented in fiction. Toward the end of her life she became very interested in the formal differences between fictional and non-fictional narratives; her 1999 book ''The Distinction of Fiction'' treats works by

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...

and

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

, the fictional biography ''Marbot'' by

Wolfgang Hildesheimer Wolfgang Hildesheimer (9 December 1916 – 21 August 1991) was a German author who incorporated the Theatre of the Absurd. He originally trained as an artist, before turning to writing. Biography Hildesheimer was born of Jewish parents in Hambu ...

(who had also written a best-selling biography of

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...

Death in Venice ''Death in Venice ''(German: ''Der Tod in Venedig'') is a novella by German author Thomas Mann, published in 1912. It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a Poli ...

, and historical novels by

Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' (''The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de P ...

and

Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

. The book won the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature Studies. In addition to the two books, she published many articles on works of fiction in German and other languages. She also had an abiding interest in

and Freudian interpretation.

Selected bibliography

* "K Enters The Castle: On the Change of Person in Kafka's Manuscript." ''Euphorion'' 62 (1968): 28-45. * "Kleist's 'Marquise von O...': The Problem of Knowledge." ''Monatshefte'' 67 (1975): 129-44. * ''Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction'' (Princeton University Press, 1978) * "The Encirclement of Narrative: On Franz Stanzel's ''Theorie des Erzählens''." ''Poetics Today'' 2 (1981): 157-82. * (with Gerard Genette). "Nouveaux nouveaux discours du récit." ''Poétique'' 61 (1985): 101-09. ommentary on Genette's ''Nouveaux discours du récit'' with Genette's response* "Wilhelm Meister's dream: reading Goethe with Freud." ''German Quarterly'' 62 (1989): 459-72. * "''Ein eigentlich träumerischer Doppelsinn'': telling timelessness in ''Der Zauberberg''." ''Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift'' 44 (1994): 425-39. * ''The Distinction of Fiction'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)

References

Obituary, Harvard Gazette, March 2012

Obituary, Boston Globe, 20 March 2012Obituary, Women in Academia

Modern Language Association, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies
* Jan Albert & Monica Fludernik
'Mediacy and Narrative Mediation', ''The Living Handbook of Narratology''
accessed 5 August 2012. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cohn, Dorrit 1924 births 2012 deaths Indiana University Bloomington faculty Radcliffe College alumni Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Stanford University alumni Austrian emigrants to the United States Harvard University faculty