Author – Narrator – Defendant

A legal Approach to Werner Kofler's Voice

Abstract

Gernot Waldner approaches the phenomenon of voice from a legal perspective using the example of Werner Kofler. The contribution provides a detailed analysis of the rhetorical strategies in the files of the court case following journalist Michael Jeannée filing for defamation because of a passage in Kofler’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen. He not only shows contradictions in the arguments but deduces effects on Kofler’s poetics. From this perspective, Kofler’s prose piece Üble Nachrede – Furcht und Unruhe emerges as a working through of the court case and as a formal reaction to concrete legal procedures, for instance identifying narrative voice with the author.