Ulrike Küchler | Freie Universität Berlin (original) (raw)
Books by Ulrike Küchler
Alien Imaginations. Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism., 2015
As both an extra-terrestrial and a terrestrial migrant, the alien provides a critical framework t... more As both an extra-terrestrial and a terrestrial migrant, the alien provides a critical framework to help us understand the interactions between cultures and to explore the transgressive force of travel over geographical, cultural or linguistic borders. Offering a perspective on the alien that connects to scholarship on immigration and globalization, Alien Imaginations brings together canonical and contemporary works in the literature and cinema of science fiction and transnationalism. By examining the role of the alien through the themes of language, anxiety and identity, the essays in this collection engage with authors such as H.G. Wells, Eleanor Arnason, Philip K. Dick and Yoko Tawada as well as directors such as Neill Blomkamp, James Cameron and Michael Winterbottom. Focusing on works that are European and North American in origin, the readings in this volume explore their critical intent and their potential to undermine many of the central notions of Western hegemonic discourses. Alien Imaginations reflects upon contemporary cultural imaginaries as well as the realities of migration, labor and life, suggesting models of resistance, if not utopian horizons.
The current success story of new media and the ongoing digitalisation of our world provide an ill... more The current success story of new media and the ongoing digitalisation of our world provide an illuminating starting point for the discussion of the powerful revolutions in our media and media uses initiated by the introduction of a(ny) ‘new’ medium: how do new media evolve and how do they relate to established, ‘old’ media and media uses? What does the rise of new media and media uses imply for other discourses? And not least: which methodological and theoretical approaches help us to understand these developments? Metamorphoses of (New) Media offers an international and interdisciplinary range of studies on these questions. In examining the effects of new media and media uses in fields such as social discourse, transmediality, and aesthetics, the essays in this collection engage with a great variety of examples, from political debate on Twitter to digital storytelling and the game-like experience of DVDs. What these diverse perspectives share, however, is an approach to Metamorphoses of (New) Media as an ongoing, recursive process of change that initiates dialogue and casts light on existing discursive, medial, and aesthetic models.
Papers by Ulrike Küchler
Die Reproduktionstechnik, so ließe sich allgemein formulieren, löst das Reproduzierte aus dem Ber... more Die Reproduktionstechnik, so ließe sich allgemein formulieren, löst das Reproduzierte aus dem Bereich der Tradition ab. Indem sie die Reproduktion vervielfältigt, setzt sie an die Stelle seines einmaligen Vorkommens sein massenweises. Und indem sie der Reproduktion erlaubt, dem Aufnehmenden in seiner jeweiligen Situation entgegenzukommen, aktualisiert sie das Reproduzierte. (Walter Benjamin) Mit Walter Benjamin sind Techniken der Reproduzierbarkeit also zweierlei: Als Techniken der Vervielfäl..
Fiktionale Darstellungen von Technik scheinen von Geschlechterstereotypen bevölkert, die Klischee... more Fiktionale Darstellungen von Technik scheinen von Geschlechterstereotypen bevölkert, die Klischees bedienen und auf der Opposition traditioneller, geschlechtlich assoziierter Merkmale basieren. So verkörpert Männlichkeit das technische Prinzip, während das Weibliche der Sphäre der Natur zugeordnet ist. Doch wie stereotyp sind technische Zukunftsvisionen? Der Band nimmt die geschlechtliche Kodiertheit literarischer und filmischer Technikzukünfte in den Fokus. Die Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes betrachten jeweils differenziertere Aspekte, beispielsweise im Hinblick auf stereotype, genderspezifische Rollenzuschreibungen, die Bedeutung geschlechtlicher Identitäten in den von Technik geprägten Räumen und ihre jeweilige mediale Vermittlung, und liefern ein erstes Panoptikum zur Erschließung der Fragestellung von Gender und Technikzukünften unter spezifisch kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive
arcadia, 2014
Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of read... more Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The following essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud's definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces 'trouble at times': translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such 'trouble at times' that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a 'pedagogical reading machine' (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an 'aesthetic reading machine' (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a 'critical reading machine' (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.
![Research paper thumbnail of An der Schwelle zur Präsenz: Erleben und Erzählen [Präsenz und Text. Strategien des Transfers in Literatur(wissenschaft) und Philosophie. Interdisziplinärer Workshop, 06.-08.05.2010, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/92896314/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Jltonline Conference Proceedings, Mar 14, 2011
Alien Imaginations : Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism
The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alterna... more The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alternative places and thus comprehend familiar spaces more thoroughly. The protagonists’ journeys are frequently initiated, mediated or accompanied by encounters with various objects of art and different artistic ‘languages’, not only in works by well-known dystopian writers such as H.G. Wells, but also in Alfred Kubin’s only novel The Other Side (Die andere Seite, 1908/09), Frigyes Karinthy’s Voyage to Faremido (Utazás Faremidóba, 1916) and Evgenij Zamjatin’s novel We (Мы, 1921). Which particular function does art assume in the encounter with the alien other? Which effects does the twofold transition between different story worlds and different aesthetic worlds evoke? What does this mean for the particular genre of utopian and dystopian fiction? This essay elaborates on inter-medial and ‘interart’ problems as related to issues of liminality in utopian/dystopian fiction. It discusses the use of painting as language in Kubin, language as music in Karinthy and music as art in Zamjatin. Drawing on these three novels the essay proposes to treat intermedial encounters with the alien art as a particular, self-reflexive, means to reflect on the process of transition between worlds while performing it. Thus, traditional conceptions of art and mediality as well as the self and the other become subject to a (re-)definition.
nbn-resolving.de
... Als exemplarische Texte wählten sie daher zur Vorbereitung Lev Tolstojs Der Tod des Ivan Il&#... more ... Als exemplarische Texte wählten sie daher zur Vorbereitung Lev Tolstojs Der Tod des Ivan Il'ič (Smert' Ivana Il'iča ... zu verengter Blickwinkel: dies nicht zuletzt auch aufgrund der interdisziplinären Provenienz der Beitragenden und ihrer zwischen literari-scher Konkretisierung ...
This essay examines digital worlds of fiction that are, in their own ways, still based on literar... more This essay examines digital worlds of fiction that are, in their own ways, still based on literary modes of narration, but go far beyond them, and the role of the reader within them. The essay suggests to distinguish three different qualities of interaction that influence the individual approach to digital art: the instrumental, phenomenal, and aesthetic experience of the recipient. The argument then centres around three browser-based examples that set various tasks for the new recipient and focus on different aspects of new media literacy: The 12 Labors of the Internet User (2008) is a collaborative bilingual English-French project that translates the myth of the Herculean labors into technological challenges for the new media recipient. Dadaventuras (2004) employs these technological potentials of new media to link various pieces of Spanish-language literature—from 15th century Catalan poetry to popular culture—to the artistic modes of the Avantgarde and asks its recipients to trace and (re-)compose the history of literature and the arts. In the interactive narrative Loss of Grasp (2010), the reader finally assumes the role of the author and has to face the different stages of the process of transmedia storytelling itself.
Das riskante Projekt II
This article deals with dystopia as a literary method of critically examining and reflecting on p... more This article deals with dystopia as a literary method of critically examining and reflecting on processes of (social) change in the modern age. In the two-world model (Huntington) of utopia and dystopia, artificial worlds and people can be developed as figures of reflection and places for testing coping strategies in dealing with the phenomena of modernity. Here, different realities and sign systems meet and their compatibility and translatability are tested in the reality of the literary text: Convention and invention, isolation of the subject and mass culture, old and new forms of (literary) speech about it, to name just a few poles of these confrontational movements. Examples include Alfred Kubin's only novel Die andere Seite (1908/09), which itself is particularly suitable for examining this problem due to its combination of different artistic sign systems, writing and image, as well as Gustav Meyrink's novel Der Golem (1913/14), which was influenced by his work. But the dystopia as a genre was also differentiated beyond the borders of the German-speaking world: for example in H.G. Wells' works or in Yevgeny Zamyatin's Мы (We, 1921). Using selected examples, the article shows which techniques and procedures make dystopia suitable for renegotiating the position of man in the brave new world of modernity.
The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alterna... more The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alternative places and thus comprehend familiar spaces more thoroughly. The protagonists’ journeys are frequently initiated, mediated or accompanied by encounters with various objects of art and different artistic ‘languages’, not only in works by well-known dystopian writers such as H.G. Wells, but also in Alfred Kubin’s only novel The Other Side (Die andere Seite, 1908/09), Frigyes Karinthy’s Voyage to Faremido (Utazás Faremidóba, 1916) and Evgenij Zamjatin’s novel We (Мы, 1921). Which particular function does art assume in the encounter with the alien other? Which effects does the twofold transition between different story worlds and different aesthetic worlds evoke? What does this mean for the particular genre of utopian and dystopian fiction? This essay elaborates on inter-medial and ‘interart’ problems as related to issues of liminality in utopian/dystopian fiction. It discusses the use of painting as language in Kubin, language as music in Karinthy and music as art in Zamjatin. Drawing on these three novels the essay proposes to treat intermedial encounters with the alien art as a particular, self-reflexive, means to reflect on the process of transition between worlds while performing it. Thus, traditional conceptions of art and mediality as well as the self and the other become subject to a (re-)definition.
arcadia. International Journal of Literary Culture
Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of read... more Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud’s definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces ‘trouble at times’: translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such ‘trouble at times’ that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a ‘pedagogical reading machine’ (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an ‘aesthetic reading machine’ (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a ‘critical reading machine’ (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
The marionette has two key characteristics: its mechanical structure and its marvellous effect. A... more The marionette has two key characteristics: its mechanical structure and its marvellous effect. Although the puppet theatre requires both characteristics, they must remain separate, thus rendering the marionette a figure defined by techniques of delimitation. From the perspective of artistic production, the marionette is a mechanical creature that depends upon the puppeteer’s artistic abilities to control its strings. Yet, from the perspective of artistic reception, the marionette is a marvellous figure that appears as if it literally has “no strings attached” and that independently converses and engages with its fellow figures and the audience. The marionette’s aesthetic potential is thus characterized by the intrinsic tension between the mechanical reality inside and the marvellous reality outside, and their respective conflicting laws. What allows for the parallel validity of the laws of both aspects are the inner workings of the puppet theatre itself: the fourth wall of the picture-frame separates the reality of the puppeteer’s realm above and behind the stage from the reality of the marionette’s realm on stage and beyond. When the marionette as the protagonist of the puppet theatre assumes the role of a literary protagonist, however, this invisible wall becomes visible simultaneously highlighting and adopting the marionette’s aesthetic potential in an interplay with the literary text itself. Against this backdrop, the essay discusses the marionette as a liminal figure between the mechanical, the marvellous, and the medial in Theodor Storm’s famous novella "Pole Poppenspäler".
Talks by Ulrike Küchler
Alien Imaginations. Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism., 2015
As both an extra-terrestrial and a terrestrial migrant, the alien provides a critical framework t... more As both an extra-terrestrial and a terrestrial migrant, the alien provides a critical framework to help us understand the interactions between cultures and to explore the transgressive force of travel over geographical, cultural or linguistic borders. Offering a perspective on the alien that connects to scholarship on immigration and globalization, Alien Imaginations brings together canonical and contemporary works in the literature and cinema of science fiction and transnationalism. By examining the role of the alien through the themes of language, anxiety and identity, the essays in this collection engage with authors such as H.G. Wells, Eleanor Arnason, Philip K. Dick and Yoko Tawada as well as directors such as Neill Blomkamp, James Cameron and Michael Winterbottom. Focusing on works that are European and North American in origin, the readings in this volume explore their critical intent and their potential to undermine many of the central notions of Western hegemonic discourses. Alien Imaginations reflects upon contemporary cultural imaginaries as well as the realities of migration, labor and life, suggesting models of resistance, if not utopian horizons.
The current success story of new media and the ongoing digitalisation of our world provide an ill... more The current success story of new media and the ongoing digitalisation of our world provide an illuminating starting point for the discussion of the powerful revolutions in our media and media uses initiated by the introduction of a(ny) ‘new’ medium: how do new media evolve and how do they relate to established, ‘old’ media and media uses? What does the rise of new media and media uses imply for other discourses? And not least: which methodological and theoretical approaches help us to understand these developments? Metamorphoses of (New) Media offers an international and interdisciplinary range of studies on these questions. In examining the effects of new media and media uses in fields such as social discourse, transmediality, and aesthetics, the essays in this collection engage with a great variety of examples, from political debate on Twitter to digital storytelling and the game-like experience of DVDs. What these diverse perspectives share, however, is an approach to Metamorphoses of (New) Media as an ongoing, recursive process of change that initiates dialogue and casts light on existing discursive, medial, and aesthetic models.
Die Reproduktionstechnik, so ließe sich allgemein formulieren, löst das Reproduzierte aus dem Ber... more Die Reproduktionstechnik, so ließe sich allgemein formulieren, löst das Reproduzierte aus dem Bereich der Tradition ab. Indem sie die Reproduktion vervielfältigt, setzt sie an die Stelle seines einmaligen Vorkommens sein massenweises. Und indem sie der Reproduktion erlaubt, dem Aufnehmenden in seiner jeweiligen Situation entgegenzukommen, aktualisiert sie das Reproduzierte. (Walter Benjamin) Mit Walter Benjamin sind Techniken der Reproduzierbarkeit also zweierlei: Als Techniken der Vervielfäl..
Fiktionale Darstellungen von Technik scheinen von Geschlechterstereotypen bevölkert, die Klischee... more Fiktionale Darstellungen von Technik scheinen von Geschlechterstereotypen bevölkert, die Klischees bedienen und auf der Opposition traditioneller, geschlechtlich assoziierter Merkmale basieren. So verkörpert Männlichkeit das technische Prinzip, während das Weibliche der Sphäre der Natur zugeordnet ist. Doch wie stereotyp sind technische Zukunftsvisionen? Der Band nimmt die geschlechtliche Kodiertheit literarischer und filmischer Technikzukünfte in den Fokus. Die Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes betrachten jeweils differenziertere Aspekte, beispielsweise im Hinblick auf stereotype, genderspezifische Rollenzuschreibungen, die Bedeutung geschlechtlicher Identitäten in den von Technik geprägten Räumen und ihre jeweilige mediale Vermittlung, und liefern ein erstes Panoptikum zur Erschließung der Fragestellung von Gender und Technikzukünften unter spezifisch kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive
arcadia, 2014
Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of read... more Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The following essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud's definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces 'trouble at times': translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such 'trouble at times' that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a 'pedagogical reading machine' (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an 'aesthetic reading machine' (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a 'critical reading machine' (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.
Jltonline Conference Proceedings, Mar 14, 2011
Alien Imaginations : Science Fiction and Tales of Transnationalism
The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alterna... more The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alternative places and thus comprehend familiar spaces more thoroughly. The protagonists’ journeys are frequently initiated, mediated or accompanied by encounters with various objects of art and different artistic ‘languages’, not only in works by well-known dystopian writers such as H.G. Wells, but also in Alfred Kubin’s only novel The Other Side (Die andere Seite, 1908/09), Frigyes Karinthy’s Voyage to Faremido (Utazás Faremidóba, 1916) and Evgenij Zamjatin’s novel We (Мы, 1921). Which particular function does art assume in the encounter with the alien other? Which effects does the twofold transition between different story worlds and different aesthetic worlds evoke? What does this mean for the particular genre of utopian and dystopian fiction? This essay elaborates on inter-medial and ‘interart’ problems as related to issues of liminality in utopian/dystopian fiction. It discusses the use of painting as language in Kubin, language as music in Karinthy and music as art in Zamjatin. Drawing on these three novels the essay proposes to treat intermedial encounters with the alien art as a particular, self-reflexive, means to reflect on the process of transition between worlds while performing it. Thus, traditional conceptions of art and mediality as well as the self and the other become subject to a (re-)definition.
nbn-resolving.de
... Als exemplarische Texte wählten sie daher zur Vorbereitung Lev Tolstojs Der Tod des Ivan Il&#... more ... Als exemplarische Texte wählten sie daher zur Vorbereitung Lev Tolstojs Der Tod des Ivan Il'ič (Smert' Ivana Il'iča ... zu verengter Blickwinkel: dies nicht zuletzt auch aufgrund der interdisziplinären Provenienz der Beitragenden und ihrer zwischen literari-scher Konkretisierung ...
This essay examines digital worlds of fiction that are, in their own ways, still based on literar... more This essay examines digital worlds of fiction that are, in their own ways, still based on literary modes of narration, but go far beyond them, and the role of the reader within them. The essay suggests to distinguish three different qualities of interaction that influence the individual approach to digital art: the instrumental, phenomenal, and aesthetic experience of the recipient. The argument then centres around three browser-based examples that set various tasks for the new recipient and focus on different aspects of new media literacy: The 12 Labors of the Internet User (2008) is a collaborative bilingual English-French project that translates the myth of the Herculean labors into technological challenges for the new media recipient. Dadaventuras (2004) employs these technological potentials of new media to link various pieces of Spanish-language literature—from 15th century Catalan poetry to popular culture—to the artistic modes of the Avantgarde and asks its recipients to trace and (re-)compose the history of literature and the arts. In the interactive narrative Loss of Grasp (2010), the reader finally assumes the role of the author and has to face the different stages of the process of transmedia storytelling itself.
Das riskante Projekt II
This article deals with dystopia as a literary method of critically examining and reflecting on p... more This article deals with dystopia as a literary method of critically examining and reflecting on processes of (social) change in the modern age. In the two-world model (Huntington) of utopia and dystopia, artificial worlds and people can be developed as figures of reflection and places for testing coping strategies in dealing with the phenomena of modernity. Here, different realities and sign systems meet and their compatibility and translatability are tested in the reality of the literary text: Convention and invention, isolation of the subject and mass culture, old and new forms of (literary) speech about it, to name just a few poles of these confrontational movements. Examples include Alfred Kubin's only novel Die andere Seite (1908/09), which itself is particularly suitable for examining this problem due to its combination of different artistic sign systems, writing and image, as well as Gustav Meyrink's novel Der Golem (1913/14), which was influenced by his work. But the dystopia as a genre was also differentiated beyond the borders of the German-speaking world: for example in H.G. Wells' works or in Yevgeny Zamyatin's Мы (We, 1921). Using selected examples, the article shows which techniques and procedures make dystopia suitable for renegotiating the position of man in the brave new world of modernity.
The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alterna... more The protagonists in utopian/dystopian fiction are travelers and alien figures who explore alternative places and thus comprehend familiar spaces more thoroughly. The protagonists’ journeys are frequently initiated, mediated or accompanied by encounters with various objects of art and different artistic ‘languages’, not only in works by well-known dystopian writers such as H.G. Wells, but also in Alfred Kubin’s only novel The Other Side (Die andere Seite, 1908/09), Frigyes Karinthy’s Voyage to Faremido (Utazás Faremidóba, 1916) and Evgenij Zamjatin’s novel We (Мы, 1921). Which particular function does art assume in the encounter with the alien other? Which effects does the twofold transition between different story worlds and different aesthetic worlds evoke? What does this mean for the particular genre of utopian and dystopian fiction? This essay elaborates on inter-medial and ‘interart’ problems as related to issues of liminality in utopian/dystopian fiction. It discusses the use of painting as language in Kubin, language as music in Karinthy and music as art in Zamjatin. Drawing on these three novels the essay proposes to treat intermedial encounters with the alien art as a particular, self-reflexive, means to reflect on the process of transition between worlds while performing it. Thus, traditional conceptions of art and mediality as well as the self and the other become subject to a (re-)definition.
arcadia. International Journal of Literary Culture
Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of read... more Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud’s definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces ‘trouble at times’: translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such ‘trouble at times’ that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a ‘pedagogical reading machine’ (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an ‘aesthetic reading machine’ (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a ‘critical reading machine’ (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
The marionette has two key characteristics: its mechanical structure and its marvellous effect. A... more The marionette has two key characteristics: its mechanical structure and its marvellous effect. Although the puppet theatre requires both characteristics, they must remain separate, thus rendering the marionette a figure defined by techniques of delimitation. From the perspective of artistic production, the marionette is a mechanical creature that depends upon the puppeteer’s artistic abilities to control its strings. Yet, from the perspective of artistic reception, the marionette is a marvellous figure that appears as if it literally has “no strings attached” and that independently converses and engages with its fellow figures and the audience. The marionette’s aesthetic potential is thus characterized by the intrinsic tension between the mechanical reality inside and the marvellous reality outside, and their respective conflicting laws. What allows for the parallel validity of the laws of both aspects are the inner workings of the puppet theatre itself: the fourth wall of the picture-frame separates the reality of the puppeteer’s realm above and behind the stage from the reality of the marionette’s realm on stage and beyond. When the marionette as the protagonist of the puppet theatre assumes the role of a literary protagonist, however, this invisible wall becomes visible simultaneously highlighting and adopting the marionette’s aesthetic potential in an interplay with the literary text itself. Against this backdrop, the essay discusses the marionette as a liminal figure between the mechanical, the marvellous, and the medial in Theodor Storm’s famous novella "Pole Poppenspäler".