SOURCE: "Transitional Time in Keller's Züricher Novellen," in PMLA, Vol. 89, No. 1, January, 1974, pp. 77-84.

In this excerpt, Radandt contends that the short fiction comprising Züricher Novellen focuses on times of cultural, historical and social change.

The claim has been made that Keller portrays the high points of Zurich's cultural history in his Züricher Novellen. Most recently, Karl Reichert [in DVLG, 1962] has expressed such a view, citing three of the five novellas of the cycle in support of his point: Hadlaub as describing the origin of the famous Manesse manuscript; Ursula as a tale from Zwingli's Reformation; and Der Landvogt von Greifensee as depicting Zurich's Rococo period with Bodmer, Breitinger, and Gessner. . . .

[In his Gottfried Keller: Sämtliche Werke, edited by Carl Helbling, 1945] Carl Helbling, too, appears to think that Zurich's cultural history was Keller's major concern in these novellas. In speculating on the author's reasons...