German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects (e.g. Alemannic).
An early flowering of German literature is the Middle High German period of the High Middle Ages. Modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment (such as Herder) and reaches its classical form at the turn of the 18th century with Weimar Classicism (Goethe and Schiller).
Read more about German Literature: Periodization, Middle Ages, Early Modern Period, 21st Century, Nobel Prize Laureates
Famous quotes containing the words german and/or literature:
“The Germans—once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)