Veronal Sleep

Journal article

AbstractExisting scholarship has demonstrated that the literary and medical writings of the author-physician Arthur Schnitzler are inextricably intertwined. Yet very little attention has been paid to problems of pharmacology, although medical substances appear frequently in his works. Based on a discovery in the corporate archives of the pharmaceutical giant Bayer – the finding that the company took notice of (and issue with) the role of the soporific Veronal in Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else – the article proposes a reading that situates this novella in the context of the ›Veronal culture‹ of the early twentieth century. Providing the first reading of Fräulein Else with a focus on the soporific, the present article reveals that one dimension of the novella consists in a literary intervention into debates about public health.

Authors: Klinger, SP

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte
• Volume: 98
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 83-104
• Publication date: 2023-03-22
• DOI: 10.1007/s41245-023-00152-6
• EISSN: 2365-9521
• ISSN: 0012-0936
• Language: English
• Keywords: Law; Notice; Political science; Scholarship; Art; Literature; Reading (process); Novella; Sociology; History; Context (archaeology)