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The Fin-de-siŠcle Culture of Adolescence, by John Neubauer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

John Neubauer has done for the phenomenon of adolescence what Carl Schorske did for the city of Vienna (in Fin-de-siŠcle Vienna; Politics and Culture), by exploring its parameters through literary texts and locating it within a larger psycho-socio-political framework. Whereas Schorske separated literature from other cultural artifacts and social institutions, Neubauer emphasizes, particularly in his concluding chapter "Adolescence: The Fiction of Reality," the symbiotic relationship of literature and society. These particular, fin-de-siŠcle literary texts, in Neubauer's view, move beyond mere reflection of social institutions to, in fact, help shape them: "modern adolescence was the product not just of slow and blind changes in family structure, schooling, and medical care but also of perception and discourse that were in turn patterned to no small degree by fiction" (82).

Neubauer structures his book around, first, a challenge to two commonly-held views of adolescence in 1900, and secondly, around his own competing interpretation of the phenomenon. He rejects the idea that adolescents were "first and foremost engaged in a generational conflict," and that "they were heroic rebels fighting for the emancipation of the individual" (11). Rather, Neubauer believes that the primary formative influence in this period was peer-group culture, due to "the sudden sprouting of organizations (whether founded by adults or initiated by youth itself) that forced the individual back into bonds" (11). In the last two chapters of the book Neubauer discusses numerous youth groups, focussing his attention on the Boy Scouts in England and the Wandervogel and Jugendbewegung (youth movement) in Germany.

In the opening chapters, Neubauer investigates numerous literary examples of adolescence, comparing Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Mann's Tonio Kr"ger, Musil's Die Verwirrungen des Z"glings T"rless, Larbaud's Fermina Marquez, Alain-Fournier's Le grand Meaulnes, Hesse's Demian, and Lacretelle's Silbermann. The author's concern in these initial chapters is with the narrator/protagonist relationship and "the protagonist's shift from mimetic to metaphoric language" (18). One could well argue that these sections are the most theoretically challenging and thus perhaps the most interesting in the book. Moving to a discussion of adolescent groups, Neubauer further demonstrates his comprehensive familiarity with European texts on adolescence, discussing Kipling's Stalky & Co., Gide's The Counterfeiters, Moln r's The P l Street Boys, and several novels by BarrŠs including his first trilogy, Le culte de moi. Many authors who attempt such vast surveys of literary works often merely juxtapose texts, or at best draw occasional parallels, leaving much of the comparative work to the reader, but Neubauer in no way shies away from complex analyses and in-depth comparisons. In this regard he provides a model comparative literary scholars should heed.

Although readers might be interested in parallels between turn-of-the-century works and later novels about adolescence, Neubauer strictly limits this study to works published within his fin-de-siŠcle framework (1881-1925). In similarly circumscribing his "literature of adolescence" as a genre, he proceeds in a curiously negative fashion by describing what it is not: it is neither poetry nor drama because they provide "emotions served raw" (82); it is not literature by adolescents or even for adolescents; and it is not diaries. Rather, Neubauer posits, "the main body of literature concerning adolescence was written by and for adults, who preferred subtle and form-conscious literature" (82). Neubauer is equally clear that this literature is not by or about women. Indeed, in reading this book, one would have to conclude that adolescence is a male phenomenon. Colette and Gabriele Reuter are mentioned in passing as are Marie Bashkirtseff and Anne Frank, but the only other women cited are Karen Horney and Freud's "Dora," both of whom Neubauer presents as victims of "the adolescence of psychoanalysis."

Following a chapter on the visual arts (Munch, Kokoschka, Die Br�cke, Schiele), reminiscent of Schorske's discussions of Klimt and Kokoschka, the remaining sections of the book move from the field of psychology, through social institutions (school, church, court), to youth organizations and movements (Boy Scouts, Wandervogel). Whereas Neubauer carefully integrated (through extensive comparison and cross-references) his earlier discussions of literary works on adolescence, he chooses not to refer back to the literary examples when he moves to this later "social" consideration of the phenomenon. Nonetheless the resulting overview is both thorough and comprehensive. In short, this book provides "everything you ever wanted to know about adolescence (European, turn-of-the-century), but would not have thought to ask," to paraphrase the well-known clich‚. Having read The Fin-de-siŠcle Culture of Adolescence, I cannot imagine ever again teaching in the same way a literary text in which an adolescent appears, whether it be Grass' Katz und Maus, Beauvoir's M‚moires d'une jeune fille rang‚e, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, or perhaps a film such as "M„dchen in Uniform." One also gains a different understanding of the socialization and resulting mentality of the generation sacrificed in the battles of World War I. For those seeking more information on the subject of adolescence in this period, Neubauer provides an extensive bibliography and an appendix of "Publications on Adolescence 1881-1925," listing works from numerous Western countries.

In Fin-de-SiŠcle Vienna Schorske imbedded several authors (Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal) qua cultural figures in what is foremost a cultural study of the period. Neubauer by contrast gives equal weight in his book to literary and cultural aspects of his topic, and offers close and detailed textual readings of the literary works. Although he does not draw explicit connections between literary and cultural phenomena, he does juxtapose the two analyses, and an astute reader automatically makes the links in the reading process.

For this reason the publication of Neubauer's book is timely: it provides an excellent pioneering example of how cultural studies can fruitfully be combined with comparative literary study at a time when that relationship (seen by some as representing mutually exclusive elements) is undergoing intense debate. Not only does it contribute in a concrete way to the ongoing discussion, but it does so admirably: it is exemplary in its interdisciplinarity and inter-nationalism.

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Dr. Elaine Martin, emartin@woodsquad.as.ua.edu