| Summary: | <p>This study re-evaluates and repositions the late writings of the Austrian author Thomas
Bernhard (1931-89). Over thirty years after his death, Bernhard is widely considered to be
a writer of international relevance. He is renowned for his bleak portrayals of modern
society, his scandalous critiques of his homeland, and his infectious and much-imitated
linguistic style. But there is another side to Bernhard—one which existing analyses of his
domestic controversies and foreign fanbases are yet to examine fully. In this study, I argue
that Bernhard’s late prose and dramatic works are centrally concerned with the relationship
between art and social living. He explores forms of learning from art, and how engaging
with art can affect ways of behaving towards others and oneself.</p>
<p>This study resituates Bernhard’s late works outside of their more conventional
domestic contexts to bring these aspects of his writings more clearly into focus. Starting
from a reconsideration of what it means to read Bernhard as world literature, I reposition
the author alongside three Anglophone points of comparison: Angela Carter, Timberlake
Wertenbaker, and J. M. Coetzee. These authors, who are yet to be compared with Bernhard
in scholarship, allow me to re-evaluate his late prose and dramatic works beyond their local
controversies in 1980s Austria; they help me to illuminate the humanity and self-awareness
of a writer more commonly associated with unremitting negativity; and they enable me to
investigate what Bernhard’s late works still have to say about art, decades on from his
cultural moment. Reimagining Bernhard beyond his familiar intertexts, his existing
international reception, and his own self-staging, this study will be of interest to scholars of
Bernhard, late twentieth-century literature, and comparative literature more generally. </p>
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