Economic Narratives in Zum Wilden Mann

Abstract

Wilhelm Raabe’s Zum wilden Mann transcends the conventional classification of the nineteenth-century regional novel. Its narrative structure is deeply embedded in the economic transformations of Germany’s Gründerzeit. At its core, the novel articulates an economic narrative that encodes the specific forms of social alienation characteristic of the period, giving literary shape to the disintegration of traditional communities and the pervasive estrangement of interpersonal relations in the entrepreneurial age. Moreover, the text anticipates the systemic crises inherent in modern capitalist expansion. Through a close analysis of the reciprocal construction of narrative form and economic logic, this article argues that Zum wilden Mann exposes the profound disorientation of values accompanying Germany’s nineteenth-century social and economic transformation.