Among Mosaic Stars: Architectural Representations in W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project

In the present study, I focus on the architecture in W. G. Sebald’s 2001 novel Austerlitz and investigate how Sebald transforms the narrative of human construction into a kind of literary expression of his perspective on history and the nature of human existence. To explore this issue, I will juxtapose Sebald’s novel with Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. By making a comparative investigation into the stylistic features and cultural significance of some prominent architecture in both works, I wish to suggest that Sebald, in his novel that manifests a profound degree of intertextuality with The Arcades Project, inherited Benjamin’s skepticism about the progressive evolution of human society.