Grant Success: Professor Julian Preece

Professor Julian Preece (German, Swansea University) and Sven Hanuschek (Ludwigs-Maximilian Universität, Munich) have just received news that their application for AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) funding has been approved. Worth £300,000 over the next three years, this award will see Professors Preece and Hanuschek explore the British exile experiences of one of the foremost twentieth-century writers of German. At a moment when the topics of migration, refugees, and political asylum remain central to debates about national identities across Europe, it would be an understatement to say that this award is timely. 

Elias Canetti's role in British literary life in the mid-twentieth century is relatively unknown, especially in the UK itself, for three reasons: the subject has not been systematically researched; key primary and secondary texts remain untranslated; his diaries and the letters written to him have remained up to now under embargo. 

 As well as interpreting an episode of British cultural and literary history which largely took place in German for readers of English and scholars in English literature, the project brings Anglophone research on Canetti to the attention of German Germanistik. More fundamentally, the project proposes to shift understanding of Canetti's legacy in Literary Studies as practised in the German-speaking countries and in Anglophone literary culture, both in the academy and beyond it. 

Speaking of his award, Professor Preece said: ''I am delighted to be working with Sven Hanuschek, one of Germany's most respected literary biographers, to find out more about Elias Canetti's interactions with British writers and intellectuals during his exile in London from 1939 to 1972. Sven knows the Zurich Archive, which houses Canetti's papers, better than any other scholar. Canetti's diaries become publicly available in 2024, which makes this an ideal time for this project. I am hoping also to involve students and colleagues at Swansea in workshop events and to reach out beyond campus with the travelling exhibition. It is amazing that there are two Swansea connections: Canetti records encounters with Dylan Thomas and his novel Auto-da-Fe was championed by Raymond Williams.'

We wish them both the very best in their scholarly endeavours over the next three years!