Max Frisch Summary

Biography EssayGerman drama during the 1950s would be unthinkable without the works of Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt; the lack of postwar drama in West Germany was made up for by these two Swiss... Read more

One of the most respected writers in the German language, Max Frisch achieved recognition as a playwright after World War II and made his mark with experimental narrative prose, notably the novel Stil... Read more

Critical Essay by Gertrud B. Pickar Frisch has never employed time as an inexorably forward-moving totality, carrying characters to an inevitable fate and moving the action to its ultimate prescribed ... Read more

Critical Essay by Francine Du Plessix Gray Few contemporary writers have attacked the traditional borders between fiction and nonfiction more systematically than Max Frisch…. "Montauk,&#... Read more

Critical Essay by Steven Kellman [Montauk] takes its title and its authority from the town on Long Island where Frisch spends a weekend in the company of a woman who works for his American publisher a... Read more

Critical Essay by Peter Ruppert Max Frisch's most recent play, Biography: A Game (1967), has puzzled critics because it seems to contradict the dramaturgy according to which it was written. The... Read more

Critical Essay by George Stade "I have been serving up stories to some sort of public, and in these stories I have, I know, laid myself bare—to the point of non-recognition." So F... Read more

Critical Essay by Arrigo Subiotto In a more direct, less complex and ambiguous manner than Dürrenmatt, Frisch made a worthy, honest attempt in his plays (more private themes dominate his prose ... Read more

Critical Essay by Marion Glastonbury The possibility of self-knowledge with and through others is [Max Frisch's] perennial theme. The elusiveness of shared truth torments his protagonists. Incr... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Gilman Max Frisch isn't an easy writer to classify. He's Swiss but in no sense a regionalist; he's neither comfortably traditional nor avant-garde in his... Read more

Critical Essay by Jim Miller ["Bluebeard"] shows Frisch to be in dazzling command of his meticulous literary powers. The hero is a hapless Don Juan named Herr Doktor Schaad. We meet him ... Read more

In the following essay, Weigel explores the role of communication and speech in Bluebeard. Following acquittal on charges of murdering a prostitute, Felix Theodor Schaad, M.D., begins to search for th... Read more

In the following essay, Birkerts traces Frisch's literary development. The precision-minded Swiss have never been famous for grand gesture or passionate utterance. It is as if exposure to the m... Read more

In the following essay, Lokke discusses thematic and stylistic similarities between two variations of the Bluebeard folktale: Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Frisch's Bluebeard. L... Read more

In the following essay, Brombert surveys the central themes of Frisch's work, focusing on the author's concern with weakness and failure. Max Frisch's second diary or sketchbook, ... Read more

In the following essay, Thornton interprets Homo faber in terms of the Daedalus myth. Juvenal, in the first of his Satires, asks why he should not attack the vices of his age instead of choosing safe ... Read more

In the following essay, Shipe asserts that “the real subject of Montauk is how autobiographical material came to be transformed into a work of fiction.” Montauk (1976) is a work which in... Read more

In the following essay, Ruppert contrasts the aesthetic orientations of Bertolt Brecht and Frisch. With few exceptions critics have approached Frisch's experimentation in the theater as an exte... Read more

In the following essay, Blair examines Frisch's utilization of two archetypes—the Wise Old Man and the Shadow—in Homo faber and relates it to C. G. Jung's psychology and us... Read more

In the following essay, White discusses the major thematic and stylistic elements of Blaubart. Frisch's Blaubart, Eine Erzählung was written in 1981. Interviewing Frisch for his seventie... Read more

In the following essay, Koepke finds parallels between several of Frisch's narrators and protagonists. Herr Geiser, the narrator and protagonist of Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (1979;... Read more