Name: An Anthology of German Novellas
Brand: Siegfried Weing
Price: 38.95 USD
Availability: InStock

Siegfried Weing

An Anthology of German Novellas

$38.95

Collection of sixteen German novellas from the 17th to the 20th century in the original language, showing the wide range of the genre, and fully glossed.

This new collection, intended for the student and the interested general reader of German alike, includes both traditional examples, and those which fall outside the usual canon. The sixteen novellas in the volume have been carefully chosen on the bases of length, historical significance, popularity, and interest, and have been extensively glossed by the editor, who also provides an introduction to the history and theory of the genre.

SiegfriedWeing is Professor of Modern Languages at the Virginia Military Institute.

Winder McConnell

A Companion to the Nibelungenlied

$39.95

Key topics in important German medieval work surveyed and reassessed.

Few works of the middle ages can boast the `staying power' of the 'heroic' Nibelungenlied and few have generated more controversy both among scholars and the educated public. The Nibelung theme has been ubiquitous over the past 150 years in a wide spectrum of literary and as well as non-literary endeavors. It was used by Friedrich Hebbel as the basis for one of his best psychological dramas, by Wagner, along with the Old Norse analogues, for Die Ring des Nibelungen, and by the film maker Fritz Lang for his 1920s Expressionist masterpiece, Die Nibelungen. Its heroes provided suitable models for German troops who marched against Napoleon, while by the end of World War II, the Nibelung tradition had provided material for a speech by Göring, the name for Germany's western line of defense, and significantly, the cuffband designation of the last 'division' formed in the elite Combat SS.
This Companion to the Nibelungenlied draws on the expertise of scholars from German, Britain, and the United States to offer the reader fresh perspectives on a wide variety of topics regarding the epic: the latest theories regarding manuscript tradition, authorship, conflict, combat, and politics, the Otherworld and its inhabitants, eroticism (in both the Nibelungenlied and Wagner's Ring), the reception both of the Nibelungenlied in the twentieth century and of its most intriguing protagonist, Kriemhild, key concepts used by the poet, the heroic, feudal, and courtly elements in the work, and an analysis of archetypal elements from the perspective of Jungian psychology.

Winder McConnell is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis.

A Companion to the <I>Nibelungenlied</I>

Barbara Stevens Heusel

Iris Murdoch's Paradoxical Novels

$110.00

The first study of the literary criticism on Murdoch's novels.

The novels of the late Iris Murdoch have been compared to Shakespeare; her name has been put forward for the Nobel Prize in literature; her works have been translated into 29 languages; and no less a critic than Harold Bloom has said of her 'no other contemporary British novelist seems to me to be of Murdoch's eminence.' Collecting the major critics who have described for the last third of a century the phenomena of Iris Murdoch's fiction, this study analyzes the stories those critics tell about her artistic processes. Murdoch passed away in February 1999 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's Disease, and now it seems time to examine her critical reception. There are three major questions at the heart of this reception and at the heart of the present study: to what extent is Murdoch a philosophical novelist, a realistic novelist, a postmodern novelist? The book also deals with the question of Murdoch's reputation in the literary world: an intriguing question in view of the praise of Bloom and other critics and writers. This is the first full-length work to deal with the literary criticism on Murdoch.

Barbara Stevens Heusel isprofessor of English at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri.

Larry H. Peer, Diane Long Hoeveler

Comparative Romanticisms: Power, Gender, Subjectivity

$110.00

Essays on key aspects of Romanticism, viewed in a wider European context.

Despite a century of sustained critical activity and an interest level in the last ten years never before reached (as reflected in the sheer number of scholarly works produced), the study of Romanticism remains focused for the most part through individual, national, and linguistic views, and is now largely embedded in the complications of contemporary theory as applied through those limiting views. Partly responsible is the fact that Romanticism itself forms a set of rhetorical, cultural, and ideological lenses refracting a multiplicity and even chaos that at times seems to defy comparative analysis.
In an attempt to refocus on Romanticism without trying to invent a new synthesis for the movement, the editors have selected thirteen essays from a variety of older and newer scholarly voices that represent a rethinking of key Romantic texts and interrelations through the lens of three fundamental theoretical issues: power, gender, and subjectivity. They call for a newly comparative sense of Romanticism that avoids the kind of critical explication of these issues limited to single national, linguistic, or cultural traditions, or seenthrough too narrowly applied contemporary theoretical `-isms'.

Comparative Romanticisms: Power, Gender, Subjectivity

Jane V. Curran

Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

$90.00

The first detailed reader's commentary on one of the seminal works of world literature.

Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre is commonly acknowledged to have played a pivotal role in founding the genre known as the Bildungsroman. Although a wealth of critical material has accumulated since its publication in 1795-96, a detailed commentary in English on this novel of `apprenticeship' has been lacking from the corpus. Jane V. Curran's full-length commentary fills this gap. In her analysis, Curran presents the standard material familiar from traditional commentaries, but includes passages hitherto neglected, presenting new insights in a new form. Curran stresses the importance of narrative techniques, traces the development of the characters, and draws the reader'sattention to the intertextual echoes, the use of symbols, and the many instances of irony. Curran also points out parallels between Wilhelm Meister's experiences and Goethe's life, and illuminates contemporary issues that are touched on in the novel, particularly the development of the German theater. The book provides notes with additional information for the interpretation of Goethe's work, including factual details of general interest, scholarly sources, and background information. This is a vade mecum not only for students of Goethe and of German literature, but also for all those interested in the development of the Bildungsroman.

Jane V. Curran is chair of the German Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Goethe's <I>Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship</I>

Sigrid Mayer

The Critical Reception of the Short Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates and Gabriele Wohmann

$75.00

Review of criticism of two contemporary short-story writers reflects shared German/American preoccupations.

There are many similarities in the careers and concerns of these two prominent writers: both expose in their work the violence that permeates contemporary society, whether among the rural and industrial poor or in middle-class family life. This book compares and contrasts their short fiction through a review of their critical reception, both the immediate press reactions and later academic assessments, in the United States and in Germany (where Oates hasbeen read in translation since the 1970s). How their stories were perceived reflects the preoccupations of the times in both countries, and offers a panorama of the American and German literary scene. This is the first English-language presentation to include a summary of important German criticism of both authors.

The Critical Reception of the Short Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates and Gabriele Wohmann

Rolf J. Goebel

Constructing China: Kafka's Orientalist Discourse

$80.00

Kafka's interest in and use of China establish him as a principal commentator in Western discourse on the Orient.

Goebel studies four representative works by Kafka that explore the problems of the Western representation of the Orient: his 'Description of a Struggle'; several letters to Felice Bauer, offering an interpretation of Chinese poetry in connection with the conflict between writing and Kafka's love for Felice; the canonical story 'The Great Wall of China', parodically appropriating sterotypes of China's stagnant history and authoritarian emperors for a refutation of colonialist ideas of progress; and the sequel 'An Old Manuscript', dramatising China's invasion by foreign powers and the breakdown of crosscultural communication. Elucidating these themes from a broadly comparative perspective, Goebel shows Kafka to be one of German modernism's most intriguing and self-reflective writers on the Orient.
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Professor of German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Constructing China: Kafka's Orientalist Discourse

Janet Todd

The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn

$75.00

This is the first study of the posthumous life of Aphra Behn, the extraordinary vicissitudes of her critical reception, and the personal vilifications of her reputation through three centuries. Beginning with the reception of Behn's work during her lifetime, which she herself helped to orchestrate by performing herself as a seductive woman, a beleaguered lady writer, and a serious intellectual, among other roles, the work ends with the late 20th-century reception of Behn, when the interest in gender, race, and class has made of her almost a postmodern writer. In the 17th century she was seen as a playwright of sexy and propagandist comedies, and attacked by those who disapproved her supposedly unfeminine stance and her royalist politics. Later, as the Restoration period itself fell into disrepute, Behn's plays were denigrated along with those of her fellow men, but greater opprobrium fell on her as a woman,because in the 19th century it was felt that a female writer should have higher morals than a man. During this period, Behn's reputation was exceedingly low, while her short story Oroonoko gained acclaim, freed from any association with its author or her supposedly squalid times. In the 18th and 19th centuries Oroonoko moved from being viewed as political commentary and heroic romance to a sentimental tale of doomed love and then an abolitionist text. In the early twentieth century it was hailed as one of the earliest realist texts, part of the great English ascent into the novel.
JANET TODD is professor of English at the University of East Anglia.

John J. White

Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory

$39.95

Detailed analysis of Brecht's extensive theoretical writings on the theater, including newly available works.

As an integral part of his work as a political playwright and dramaturge, Bertolt Brecht concerned himself extensively with the theory of drama. He was convinced that the Aristotelian ideal of audience catharsis through identification with a hero and the resultant experience of terror and pity worked against his goal of bettering society. He did not want his audiences to feel, but to think, and his main theoretical thrusts -- "Verfremdungseffekte" (de-familiarization devices) and epic theater, among others -- were conceived in pursuit of this goal. This is the first detailed study in English of Brecht's writings on the theater to take account of works first made available in the recent German edition of his collected works. It offers in-depth analyses of Brecht's canonical essays on the theater from 1930 to the late 1940s and early GDR years. Close readings of the individual essays are supplemented by surveys of the changing connotations within Brecht's dramaturgical oeuvre of key theoretical terms, including epic and anti-Aristotelian theater, de-familiarization, historicization, and dialectical theater. Brecht's distinct contribution to the theorizing of acting and audience response is examined in detail, and each theoretical essay and concept is placed in the context of the aesthetic debates of the time, subjected to a critical assessment, and consideredin light of subsequent scholarly thinking. In many cases, the playwright's theoretical discourse is shown to employ methods of "epic" presentation and techniques of de-familiarization that are corollaries of the dramatic techniques for which his plays are justly famous.

John J. White is Emeritus Professor of German and Comparative Literature at King's College London.

Marianne Stecher-Hansen

History Revisited

$85.00

Study of historical narratives of 20th-century Danish writer Thorkild Hansen.

History Revisited is an introduction to the historical narratives of Thorkild Hansen (1927-1989), Scandinavia's most influential writer in the documentary genre. The book offers valuable insights into the boundaries betweenhistory and literature, placing Hansen's oeuvre in the context of discussions by such canonical scholars as Collingwood, Croce, Dilthey, Foucault, and Hayden White. The book takes up in particular the question of Hansen's historical inquiries into Denmark's past and analyses how he shifts the focus from that of traditional historiography to obscure figures and failed ventures in the nation's past. Of special interest to American and English readers is thediscussion of Hansen's monumental Slave Trilogy which offers a revisionist view of Denmark's role in the African slave trade. Finally, History Revisited demonstrates how the problematics of Hansen's historical worksextend into his controversial trilogy on the trial of Knut Hamsun and into the postwar history of Norway.

Katherine R. Goodman

Amazons and Apprentices

$75.00

Examines the role of women -- particularly Luise Gottsched and Christiane von Ziegler -- in the Gottsched circle's early 18th-century efforts to reform and revitalize German intellectual life.

For a brief time in the eighteenth century, Johann Christoph Gottsched and his circle -- including prominently his wife, Luise Adelgunde Victoria Gottsched, née Kulmus -- dominated efforts to construct a German culture sophisticated enough to rival the French. In the 1730s they attempted to codify the grammar and spelling of written German, elevate German literature, refine cultural practices and taste, and introduce enlightened ideas. Gottsched's effortsto involve women in this process have been noted, but in Amazons and Apprentices, Katherine Goodman examines for the first time the Gottsched circle's intitiatives regarding intellectual women in the context of the broaderdiscourse of which they were an important part. She presents an array of voices and texts from 1715 to 1740, including dictionaries, moral weeklies, letters, translations and literature. The book focuses mainly on two women -- Christiane Mariane von Ziegler and Luise Gottsched -- and the web of cultural meaning each of them activated through her deeds and words.
Katherine R. Goodman is professor of German at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.She is the author of Dis/Closures: Women's Autobiography in Germany 1790-1914, and has edited a number of books on German women writers.

Stephen D. Dowden

German Literature, Jewish Critics

$130.00

Proceedings of the Brandeis conference on Jewish Germanists who fled Nazi Germany and their impact on Anglo-American German studies.

Among the Jewish academics and intellectuals expelled from Germany and Austria during the Nazi era were many specialists in German literature. Strangely, their impact on the practice of Germanistik in the United States, England, and Canada has been given little attention. Who were they? Did their vision of German literature and culture differ significantly from that of those who remained in their former homeland? What problems did they face in theAmerican and British academic settings? Above all, how did they help shape German studies in the postwar era? This unique and important symposium, which convened at Brandeis University under the auspices of its Center for Germanand European Studies, addresses these and many other questions. Among its distinguished participants--who numbered over thirty in all--are Peter Demetz (Yale, emeritus), Gesa Dane (Göttingen), Amir Eshel (Stanford), Willi Goetschel (Toronto), Barbara Hahn (Princeton), Susanne Klingenstein (MIT), Christoph König (Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach), Ritchie Robertson (Oxford), Egon Schwarz (Washington University St. Louis, emeritus), Hinrich Seeba (UC Berkeley), Walter Sokel (University of Virginia, emeritus), Frank Trommler (University of Pennsylvania), and many more. The volume includes not only the (revised) essays of the participants but also their prepared responses, transcripts of the panel discussion, and dialogue of the participants with members of the audience.

Stephen D. Dowden is professor of German at Brandeis University; Meike G. Werner is assistant professor of German at Vanderbilt University.

John Blair

Tracing Subversive Currents in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

$75.00

Fresh critical reading of Goethe's important novel, challenging orthodox scholarship.

In this new reading of Goethe's most influential novel Blair's close attention to the text brings startling insights to light, often taking issue with received critical opinions. He shows, for example, that Goethe slyly introducedmaterial full of low-cultural, subversive vitality that mocks conservative, authoritarian power interested in conformity or propriety. The novel does not just find fault with developments of the late Enlightenment but rather seductively describes loci of resistance to them: the marketplace, the travelling theatre, the Hanswurst. Equally, the author argues that although 'high' aesthetics, morals, institutions and rationality are impugned, they are not completely discredited: the problem with such high principles is demonstrated as being their tendency to present themselves as the only valid voice.

Tracing Subversive Currents in Goethe's <I>Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship</I>

Alan Menhennet

Grimmelshausen the Storyteller

$110.00

Critical study of Grimmelshausen's `Simplician' novels.

Johann Jakob von Grimmelshausen (1622-76) wished to be taken seriously as a writer, which by and large, in his own day, he was not. He was in fact the author of the first great German novel, Der abentheuerliche Simplicissimus (1688), out of which arose a kind of cycle of `Simplician' novels. Later generations have made up for this neglect, and established him as an accomplished satirist and profound allegorist, who confronted the temporal and eternal issues of the seventeenth century. This study sets out to show, principally through detailed textual analysis, that Grimmelshausen's `Simplician style' allows of the co-existence of general religious and moral concerns with a spontaneous response to the individual vitality, curiousness, and above all, humour of life, which is the motive force of true storytelling. In addition, while the constituent novels of the `Simplician Cycle' should be and are considered as separate entities, the author's claim that they should also be seen as a coherent whole cannot be brushed aside, and this becomes a progressively more important theme.

John F. Fetzer

Changing Perceptions of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus

$110.00

Wide-ranging survey of the critical reaction provoked by Mann's Doctor Faustus.

Since its publication in 1947, Thomas Mann's daring treatment of the Faust theme has generated diverse reactions from the critics, and continues to provoke controversies. This volume traces the history of its critical reception. Topics considered include the political stance of the author and the historical dimensions of the novel; the autobiographical background of the novel - especially in the light of the subsequent publication of Mann's diaries and private notebooks; the issue of intertextuality; the way in which the novel exhibits structural features of the music on which the narrative focuses; and the function of mythic prototypes. Of particular importance is the question ofthe precise role played by Goethe's Faust in the conception and execution of Doctor Faustus, in spite of Mann's assertion that the works had `nothing in common'. Finally, the presence of strong visual elements in thenovel leads to an assessment of the critical reception accorded to Franz Seitz's film adaptation of Doctor Faustus (1982).

JOHN F. FETZER is Professor of German Emeritus at the University of California, Davis.

Changing Perceptions of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus

David V. Pugh

Schiller's Early Dramas

$110.00

A fresh look at the critical reception of Schiller's early dramas such as The Robbers and Don Carlos.

The interpretation of the works of Friedrich Schiller, with Goethe one of the co-founders of German classicism, has long been a central concern of German critics. In a country known as 'the land of poets and thinkers,' the achievements of great writers have been a matter of national pride and identity. But special problems are raised by Schiller, whose dramas address political questions more directly than those of his fellow-classicist Goethe, yet tend toend in a manner that shifts the focus to a general moral or metaphysical level, leaving politically engaged readers dissatisfied. The reception of Schiller's works is thus not only a topic in the history of criticism, but forms achapter in the history of German political and national consciousness. Given this situation, Professor Pugh's study of the plays' fortunes at the hands of the various schools of German literary scholarship is useful both to literary scholars seeking orientation in the field and also to readers with a wider interest in German intellectual traditions.

David V. Pugh is associate professor in the Department of German, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and is the author of Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller's Aesthetics.

Luke Mancuso

The Strange Sad War Revolving

$110.00

Analysis of Whitman's reflection of civil rights legislation in his work, 1865-1876.

Walt Whitman's prolific Reconstruction project has remained the most uncultivated decade in Whitman studies for over a century. This first book-length analysis seeks to point the way for a needed recovery of Whitman's 1865-1876 publications by embedding them in the legislative discourse of black emancipation and its stormy aftermath. The supposed absence of race relations in Whitman's post-war texts has recently become a source of curiosity and denunciation. However, from 1865 to 1876, the Congressional 'workshop' was seeking to forge interracial civil rights legislation through surveillance of the implementation of such egalitarianism, as manifested in the Civil War Amendments, the Enforcement Acts of 1870-71, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
The analysis of the hegemonic shift in Whitman's implementation of his democratic poetics constitutes the innovative contribution in these pages. By welcoming ex-slaves into the Union, as well as ex-Rebel states, Whitman's Reconstruction texts enlisted his representations in the federalizing rhetoric of civil rights protection that would lapse for almost a century, before recovery in the Second Reconstruction of the 1950s and 1960s.

Alexander Stephan

Themes and Structures

$90.00

Articles investigating important themes and structures in the works of major German writers from the eighteenth century to the present day.

This collection of essays focuses on the major figures in German literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, looking at themes and structures in works by Goethe, Schlegel, Tieck, Kempowski and others. Special emphasisis given to the turn of the nineteenth century, to the contemporary period, and to German/American relations, while topics include the popularisation of Copernicus and Newton; Goethe's Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen as elegy; and, moving to the present day, a close reading of themes and structures in Wedekind's Lulu plays, Handke's Repetition, and Wolf's Kassandra project; and an investigation of the changing image of post-war Germany in American fiction. The volume as a whole is thus a fitting tribute to Theodore Ziolkowski, longtime graduate dean of Princeton University and the author of numerous books on key aspects of German literature from Romanticism to the present day.

Edward Neill

Trial by Ordeal

$75.00

A sharp view of a century's critical commentary on Hardy.

This book demonstrates how critical appropriations of Hardy's work often promote a simplifying, conventional, or conservative image that a sophisticated view of his creative intentions by no means confirms. Neill shows how tendentious and traditional approaches that diminish or even traduce Hardy's literary achievement have achieved a cultural prominence that still gives a false impression of the nature of those achievements. The first chapter discusses the biographical tradition, such a powerful aspect of Hardy's critical reception, defining the problems presented by biographically-based criticism in general and by Hardy, one of the slipperiest of literary practitioners, in particular. The second chapter offers a map of critical misreadings, suggesting how a certain "ideology" of critical reproduction emphasizes limited aspects of Hardy in a cult of nostalgic reaction, ignoring disconcertingly "subversive"or "interrogative" aspects of this intellectually progressive writer. The third chapter concentrates on the response to Hardy's poetry, persistently misrepresented as a series of essays in innocuous or eccentric rusticity; the fourth examines Jude the Obscure, the most provocative and controversial of Hardy's works, which still moves critics to howls of execration or considered, complex mediation. The bibliography includes in addition to more well-known critical works on Hardy a range of unusual and little-consulted items.

Therese von Bacheracht

Heinrich Burkhart

$75.00

Novel of political and social emancipation set in mid-19c Switzerland in its first English translation.

This highly topical work is the most interesting of Bacheracht's novels, since it was inspired by the problems causing social and political unrest in the 1840s. When banished from his domicile in Germany, Heinrich Burkhart choosesto go to Switzerland (the asylum of many German political refugees), and here he establishes a flourishing commune where workers and their families are cared for from cradle to maturity. This novel is one of the first to point tothe emergence of the technician toward the middle of the nineteenth century. The romance chronicled in the novel does not overshadow the political and social aspects of the work, but rather contributes to them by juxtaposing thesubmissive middle-class daughter and the cultured self-emancipated woman.

Nicholas Vazsonyi

Lukács Reads Goethe

$75.00

Vazsonyi shows Lukács's evolving view of Goethe, examining how in the 1930's he was able to write enthusiastically about the poet, citing him as an ideal exponent of humanism, while simultaneously accepting and even condoning Stalinism.

Long recognized as one of the foremost literary critics of the twentieth century, the Hungarian-born Georg Lukács (1885-1971) shocked many by turning to Marxism in 1918. Having adopted German as his language of choice, he used hisformidable knowledge of European cultural history to revitalize Marxist theory with History and Class Consciousness (1923), and continued to write extensively about literature. His essays on Goethe and Thomas Mann are particularly well known. Even now, discussions about the novel, realism, and literary theory are incomplete without references to his work.
The ultimate question posed by Vazsonyi's book is how Lukács in the 1930s was able to write enthusiastically about Goethe, citing him as an ideal exponent of humanism, while simultaneously accepting, even condoning Stalinism.
To solve this riddle, Vazsonyi's book begins with Lukács' early works 'Aesthetic Culture' (1910) and Soul and Forms (1911) tracing the concurrent development of Lukács' aesthetics and ethics. Both his response to contemporary literature and his growing interest in ethics reflect a critique of modernity anda vague desire to overcome cultural despair. Goethe emerges as his constant reference point, because Goethe too had rebelled against modernity but, unlike the authors of Romanticism, had found a solution expressed both in his writings and his life. The later Lukács continued to use Goethe, this time as an intellectual precursor to Marx, as a model for successful realist literature (according to theories developed by Engels), and as an ideological foil against National Socialism. His readings in Goethe and His Age (1936) and the Faust Studies (1940) apply a Hegelian notion of history in which individual tragedies, though regrettable, are necessary for the teleologicaldevelopment of the human species.

Edelgard E DuBruck

Fifteenth-Century Studies Vol. 27

$130.00

Special issue focusing on violence in fifteenth-century life, text, and image: warfare and justice, violence in family and milieu (court, town, village, and forest), hagiography, ethnicity and xenophobia, gender relations and sexual violence, brutality on the stage, and the relation of text and image in the depiction of violence.

Founded in 1977 as the publication organ for the Fifteenth-Century Symposium, Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since then. It publishes essays on all aspects of life in the fifteenth century, including literature, drama, history, philosophy, art, music, religion, science, and ritual and custom. The editors strive to do justice to the most contested medieval century, a period that has long been the stepchild of research. The fifteenth century defies consensus on fundamental issues: some scholars dispute, in fact, whether it belonged to the middle ages at all, arguing that it was a period of transition, a passage to modern times. At issue, therefore, is the very tenor of an age that stood under the influence of Gutenberg, Columbus, the Devotio Moderna,, and Humanism.
Volume 27 is a special issue offering a selection of outstanding papers on violence that will interest students of medieval history and the early Renaissance, the humanities, art history, sociology, anthropology, and even the general reader. The articles highlight warfare and justice, violence in family and milieu (court, town, village,and forest), hagiography, ethnicity and xenophobia, gender relations and sexual violence, brutality on the stage, and the relation of text and image in the depiction of violence.

Edelgard E. DuBruck is professor in theModern Languages Department at Marygrove College in Detroit; Yael Even is associate professor of Art and Art History at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

Robert C. Reimer

Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens

$38.95

A fascinating look at Nazi Germany as revealed in its films.

This collection of essays offers a view of Nazi Germany through an analysis of twenty films, representing a sampling of the period's directors and reflecting the film medium's major genres. In spite of the control that Goebbels's film industry exercised over all aspects of filmmaking in the Third Reich, the films reveal an individuality that belies subsuming them under any one rubric or containing them within any one theory. Films such as Hitlerjunge Quex, Die große Liebe, and Auf Wiedersehen Franziska represent the Nazi film industry's efforts to propagandize through entertainment. Others such as Immensee, Kleider machen Leute, and Der Schimmelreiter reveal an attempt to expropriate Germany's rich literary past for the regime. These literary adaptations and films like Glückskinder, La Habanera, and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien today seem void of Nazi ideology if viewed outside the context of Nazism. But another film, Der ewige Jude, shocks us with its virulent anti-Semitism and hateful propaganda almost sixty years after its release. All of the films treated, regardless of their fame or notoriety or the level of commitment of their directors to the Nazi cause, played an important role in a cinema that not only represents the dreams and lives of the citizens of the Third Reich, but influencedthem as well.

Robert C. Reimer is professor of German at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens

Raleigh Whitinger

Johannes Schlaf and German Naturalist Drama

$75.00

First book in English devoted to Johannes Schlaf, the 19th-century German playwright, bringing fresh insights to the whole movement of German naturalist drama.

This is the first book in English on the German playwright Johannes Schlaf (1862-1941), whose involvement in 'consistent realism' and modern theatre in the 1890s provides an insight into the origins and development of German naturalist drama. Schlaf's main contributions to this movement were with Die Familie Selicke (1890), on which he collaborated with Arno Holz, and Meister Oelze (1892), works which show his innovative talents. The author considers these works in the context of the experimental prose sketches which Schlaf worked on with Holz after 1888, and of the realist and naturalist dramas of Hebbel, Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Sudermann; he brings out their growing concern with trapped women and victimised children, as well as their critical focus on the problems of traditional poetry.

Johannes Schlaf and German Naturalist Drama

Lorna Marie Irvine

Critical Spaces

$75.00

First major critical study and comparison of two important female writers, the Canadian Margaret Laurence and the New Zealander Janet Frame.

This volume investigates the past four decades of criticism devoted to two major female contemporary writers: the New Zealander Janet Frame, and the Canadian Margaret Laurence, author of A Jest of God. The first extensive study to compare the two, it considers early close readings meant to promulgate each writer's work, and traces the various influences of narrative, feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonialist theory on a wide-ranging selection ofcommentaries. The book also focuses on connections among writers, critics, and a country's mythologies of nationalism, and, of particular significance to Canada and New Zealand, how literatures and commentaries on it illustrate national and international uses of power. Throughout, Professor Irvine points to similarities between the writers' careers, their influence on the development of the literary histories of their respective countries, their ambivalentfeelings about England, and, finally, their concern with certain marginalized groups, such as the Maoris. An extensive bibliography completes the volume.

David Hill Radcliffe

Edmund Spenser

$90.00

Survey of Spenser's critical reception, showing how it is conditioned by period and cultural context.

Spenser was vital to attempts to define what English literature should be: in Tudor England, a Protestant literature; in Stuart England, a modern literature; in Hanoverian England, a romantic and British literature. In Victorian Britain, lecturers and essayists used Spenser to exemplify the proper aims of a popular and moral literature, while in the twentieth century philologists and academic critics have used The Faerie Queene to illustrate the workings of 'culture'.
David Radcliffe argues that Spenser's writings entered actively into the process of redefining what literature is and does. In epigrams and verse epistles, prose redactions and scholarly essays, the Poet's Poet became the Critic's Poet, as various readers adopted his typology, characterisation, allegory, description, narrative devices, and modes of interpretation.

David McBride

Crosscurrents

$90.00

Studies of aspects of historical interaction between Germany, Africa and black America.

This volume brings together fascinating research on the historical interaction between Germany, African nations and Black Americans. Leading scholars explore the influence of German missions, language and culture, politics, and science on Africa and Black America. Essays examine the medieval links between Germany and Africa, encounters between immigrant Germans and America's African population during the colonial era; the influence of German culture and natinalism on African-American social elites studying in Germany throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Black American musical performers in Weimar Germany; and the shifting contacts among Black Americans, Germany, and Africa as Germany led Western modernization and expansionism during the twentieth century. The authors present a variety of disciplines and use heretofore untapped sources from German, American, and African depositories.

Reingard M. Nischik

The Canadian Short Story

$49.95

The first anthology of critical interpretations of major Canadian short stories.

Beginning in the 1890s, reaching its first full realization by modernist writers in the 1920s, and brought to its heyday during the Canadian Renaissance starting in the 1960s, the short story has become Canada's flagship genre. Itcontinues to attract the country's most accomplished and innovative writers today, among them Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Clark Blaise, and many others. Yet in contrast to the stature and popularity of the genreand the writers who partake in it, surprisingly little literary criticism has been devoted to the Canadian short story. This book redresses that imbalance by providing the first collection of critical interpretations of thirty well-known and often-anthologized Canadian short stories from the genre's beginnings through the twentieth century. A historical survey of the genre introduces the volume and a timeline comparing the genre's development in Canada, the US, and Great Britain completes it. Geared both to specialists in and students of Canadian literature, the volume is of particular benefit to the latter because it provides not only a collection of interpretations, but a comprehensive introduction to the history of the Canadian short story.

Contributors: Reingard M. Nischik, Martina Seifert, Heinz Antor, Julia Breitbach, Konrad Gross, Paul Goetsch, Dieter Meindl, Nina Kück, Stefan Ferguson, Rudolf Bader, Fabienne C. Quennet, Martin Kuester, Jutta Zimmermann, Sylvia Mergenthal, Caroline Rosenthal, Wolfgang Klooss, Lothar Hönnighausen, Heinz Ickstadt, Heinz Ickstadt, Gordon Bölling, Christina Strobel, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, Nadja Gernalzick, Eva Gruber, Brigitte Glaser, Georgiana Banita.

Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American Literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Daniel J. Farrelly

Goethe in East Germany, 1949-1989

$90.00

The first book, in the English-speaking world or elsewhere, to offer an analysis and evaluation of GDR Goethe reception.

Goethe and Schiller, as representatives of Weimar Classicism, had a pivotal function in the cultural policy of the GDR in the forty years of its existence (1949-1989). Goethe in particular was crucial to the GDR's aim of finding afocus for the cultural reformation of post-war Germany in the Soviet-occupied zone. This book offers a study of the implications of such a situation for the reception of Goethe and his work. Contrary to the general perception, influenced and represented by Walter Hinderer's chapter in the Klassik-Legende, that one-sidedness and blind obedience govern the inflexible commitment of GDR scholars of the German classical period, it can be shown that theGDR Marxist tradition of Goethe scholarship is in fact characterized by a series of vigorous internal debates.

Carol Ingalls Johnston

Of Time and the Artist

$90.00

Investigation of the complex relationship between Thomas Wolfe and his critics, showing the effect of criticism on his career.

This volume takes as its starting point Thomas Wolfe's comment in his 1936 manifesto, The Story of a Novel, that 'there is no such thing as an artistic vacuum', arguing that literature is as much the product of the community in which it evolves as of any individual's experience. In particular, it explores the troubled dialogue between Wolfe and his critics: Wolfe's energies were pitted against the fashionable critical theorists of the 1920s and 1930s, and as a result, the critical debate during those years was particularly bitter, as Wolfe sought to maintain his literary reputation, often using his fiction as a means of responding to them. Johnston describes the depressionsthat Wolfe endured after bad reviews; his response to his critics both in his correspondence and in his fiction; his relationship with his publishers and his critics, and their relationship with him. Her study, which includes material not readily available elsewhere, reveals the nature not only of Wolfe's professional career but of the literary marketplace in America during and after the 1920s.

Alan C. Leidner

Unpopular Virtues

$90.00

An up-to-date assessment of the most important scholarly criticism on one of the enfants terribles of the German Sturm und Drang.

In this study of the criticism of the most idiosyncratic voice of the German Sturm und Drang, the authors investigate why critics have so often failed to come to terms with Lenz's refusal to encourage the middle class and cater to its tastes. While many of Lenz's first reviewers found his work to be liberating, the mid-1770s soon brought a more conservative aesthetic, and he was virtually forgotten until after his death in 1792. With the rise of German classicism and romanticism, Lenz was viewed as a curiosity; his critique of contemporary society, his concern for the public welfare, and his open-textured and naturalistic style went unappreciated. And looming over every assessment of his work from the early nineteenth century on are Goethe's negative comments in Dichtung und Wahrheit: to speak of Lenz, even in our century, has always meant to deal with Goethe's opinion of him.
Leidner and Wurst's study traces Lenz reception from the earliest reviews through the nineteenth century, modernism, National Socialism, New Criticism, the rediscovery of Lenz in both Germanies after 1968, and the changes in focus after the 1992 Lenz bicentennial.

Friedrich Wilhelm Carové

Kinderleben oder das Mährchen ohne Ende: The Story without an End

$60.00

A fascinating analysis of one of the most popular children's works of all time.

Kinderleben oder das Mährchen ohne Ende (1830) is a unique product of late German Romanticism. As a Kunstmärchen or 'artificial' fairy tale (as opposed to the more 'authentic' tales collected by the Grimm brothers, for example) it combines aspects of the traditional fairy tale with philosophical ideals, particularly those of idealism. Although only one edition ever appeared in Germany, it enjoyed wide popularity in England and the United States as The Story Without an End (1834), adapted by the foremost English translator of the period, Sarah Austin, on whom much critical attention has recently been focused. This new edition of text and translation includes a valuablecommentary with notes on the nine illustrators and a list of all previous editions of the work.

Kinderleben oder das Mährchen ohne Ende: The Story without an End

Siegfried Mews

Günter Grass and His Critics

$160.00

A comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the controversial German author's works.

When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum. SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible, blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press (and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception of Grass's works.

Siegfried Mews is Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Andrew C. Wisely

Arthur Schnitzler and Twentieth-Century Criticism

$90.00

An analysis of the scholarly criticism of the great Viennese writer up to the year 2000.

Schnitzler, one of the most prolific Austrian writers of the 20th century, ruthlessly dissected his society's erotic posturing and phobias about sex and death. His most penetrating analyses include Lieutenant Gustl, the first stream-of-consciousness novella in German; Reigen, a devastating cycle of one-acts mapping the social limits of a sexual daisy-chain; and Der Weg ins Freie, a novel that combines a love story with a discussion ofthe roadblocks facing Austria's Jews. Today, his popularity is reflected by new editions and translations and by adaptations for theater, television, and film by artists such as Tom Stoppard and Stanley Kubrick. This book examinesSchnitzler reception up to 2000, beginning with the journalistic reception of the early plays. Before being suspended by a decade of Nazism, criticism in the 1920s and 30s emphasized Schnitzler's determinism and decadence. Not until the early 60s was humanist scholarship able to challenge this verdict by pointing out Schnitzler's ethical indictment of impressionism in the late novellas. During the same period, Schnitzler, whom Freud considered his literary "Doppelgänger," was often subjected to Freudian psychoanalytical criticism; but by the 80s, scholarship was citing his own thoroughgoing objections to such categories. Since the 70s, Schnitzler's remonstrance toward the Austrianestablishment has been examined by social historians and feminist critics alike, and the recently completed ten-volume edition of Schnitzler's diary has met with vibrant interest.

Andrew C. Wisely is associate professor of German at Baylor University.

Arthur Schnitzler and Twentieth-Century Criticism

Richard R. Ruppel

Gottfried Keller and His Critics

$75.00

Survey of the criticism devoted to Gottfried Keller, the important nineteenth-century writer in German.

The works of Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) rank alongside those of Goethe and Thomas Mann, yet this volume is the first in any language to examine the critical assessment and scholarly expertise devoted to him, ranging from the early stages of journalistic criticism to the present day. Professor Ruppel begins by exploring the literary industry in the nineteenth century, the literary market place, the tastes of the reading public, and the expectations of editors, before going on to survey representative journalistic assessments of Keller's writing, including critical correspondence from Keller's contemporaries. Subsequent chapters examine in chronological order the most important milestones in Keller scholarship, particularly twentieth-century criticism and the Anglo-American tradition. There is also a brief history of the translations of Keller's works into English, investigating some of the difficulties confronting English translators of Keller's poetically creative German. The study concludes with an overview of recent scholarly assessments covering the past twenty-five years.

Michael Minden, Holger Bachmann

Fritz Lang's Metropolis

$39.95

A collection of essays -- early seminal works as well as freshinterpretations -- on the famous German expressionist film,Metropolis.

Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis has justifiably become an icon for the complexities of Weimar culture. Among the important general issues it also raises are the relation between ideology and art, the status and authorship of the film text in the entertainment market, the city, the construction of gender, the relation between the human body and the machine in modernity, and the relation between mass and high culture. This volume provides abroad range of materials and resources for the study of Lang's film, including both well-known, previously published critical essays and contributions appearing for the first time here. The editors provide a two-part introductionthat furnishes context for what follows: Bachmann's part deals with the genesis, production, and contemporary reception of the film, while Minden's defines the problems posed by the text and reviews thesolutions to these problemsas proposed by later generations of critics.The first part of the book proper includes selected contemporaryreviews, commentary by Fritz Lang and others involved in the making ofthe film, and extracts from Thea von Harbou's original novel. In the second part, eight modern scholars provide fresh essays on the genesis, promotion, and reception of the film. Approximately half of the material in the volume has never before appeared in print. The volume will appealto students of German, film, cultural and intellectual history, and social theory.

Michael Minden is University Lecturer in German at Cambridge University and a fellow of Jesus College. Holger Bachmann received hisPh.D. from Cambridge on Arthur Schnitzler and film.

Beth Bjorklund

Politics in German Literature

$90.00

New readings of a variety of works in German literature, taking as a theme the conflict between the aims of politics and literature.

The essays presented here invite reflection on a considerable sweep of German literature, with representation from the medieval period to the present day. A common focus on politics (appropriately a subject of deep concern to Professor Ryder) unites the articles, written from the perspective of American Germanists. European wars and revolutions, political divisions and attempts at unification, and periods of emancipation or persecution are viewed through the illuminating lens of literature; the tension between aesthetic and ideological goals, between the aims of literature and politics, informs the works chosen for analysis, and the conflict between the certainties of politics andthe ambiguities of literature becomes evident in these new readings of both familiary and less well-known works.
BETH BJORKLAND is Professor of German at the University of Virginia; MARK E. COREY is Professor of German at the University of Arkansas.
Contributors: HORST LANGE, PAUL MICHAEL LÜTZELER, RICHARD T. GRAY, MARGARET E. WARD, RONALD HORWEGE, BETH BJORKLUND, DAVID CHISHOLM, MICHAEL W. JENNINGS, DAVID SCRASE, RAY WAKEFIELD, MARKE. CORY, MICHAEL MORTON

Ellis Shookman

Thomas Mann's Death in Venice

$130.00

Study of the critical reception of one of the most famous and widely read works of modern literature.

Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice is one of the most famous and widely read texts in all of modern literature, raising such issues as beauty and decadence, eros and irony, and aesthetics and morality. The amount and variety of criticism on the work is enormous, and ranges from psychoanalytic criticism and readings inspired by Mann's own homosexuality to inquiries into the place of the novella in Mann's oeuvre, its structure and style, and its symbolism and politics. Critics have also drawn connections between the novella and works of Plato, Euripides, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Platen, Wagner, Nietzsche, Gide, and Conrad. Ellis Shookman surveys the reception of Deathin Venice, analyzing several hundred books, articles, and other reactions to the novella, proceeding in a chronological manner that allows a historical perspective. Critics cited include Heinrich Mann, Hermann Broch, D. H. Lawrence, Karl Kraus, Kenneth Burke, Georg Lukàcs, Wolfgang Koeppen, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Thomas Mann himself. Particular attention is paid to Luchino Visconti's film, Benjamin Britten's opera, and to other more recent creative adaptations, both in Germany and throughout the world.

Ellis Shookman is associate professor of German at Dartmouth College.

Richard H. Lawson

Brother Hermann's 'Life of the Countess Yolanda of Vianden' [Leben der Graefen Iolande von Vianden]

$110.00

First translation into English of the medieval German Leben der Graefen Iolanda, making it accessible to a wider audience.

Brother Hermann was a cleric in the region of Luxembourg in the last quarter of the thirteenth century; evidence from his Life of the Countess Yolanda suggests that he was a Dominican with, perhaps surprisingly, knowledge of the Middle High German courtly epic and the poetry of other contemporaries such as Walther von der Vogelweide. The Life, written shortly after Yolanda's death in 1283, concentrates on her struggle from childhood to free herself from secular society, principally by avoiding a contracted marriage, and to enter the cloister of Marienthal, of which she became Prioress. Although Brother Hermann's epic is hagiographic in tone, the fact that he wrote itin German, not based on a Latin vita suggests that he did not regard Yolanda as a candidate for sainthood; his heroine's attempts to find fulfillment have a strong contemporary resonance. Professor Lawson's translation, thefirst ever into English prose, makes this work accessible to a more general readership.

Brother Hermann's 'Life of the Countess Yolanda of Vianden' [Leben der Graefen Iolande von Vianden]

Ann Linder

Princes of the Trenches

$75.00

Examination of German literature of the First World War, its themes and underlying vision, and examination of how it differs from the English view of the Great War.

This book is a long overdue study of German First World War literature, providing an alternative view for English speakers. In addition to the major themes of purposeless suffering, disillusionment, and irreparable loss, Ann Linder's systematic reading of German war narratives yields a different set of themes and a different manner of expression. She argues that most present a conservative vision, one rooted in the strong comradeship of Front soldiers andin their conviction that the experience, and indeed the war itself, however terrible, had personal and historical significance for the participants and their nation. This vision, originating in the romantic nationalism of nineteenth-century German thought, profoundly influenced German attitudes in the last years of the Weimar republic.

Hugh Powell

Fervor and Fiction

$85.00

Exploration of the life and works of important but little-known 19th-century German woman writer.

This book explores the neglected figure of Therese von Bacheracht (1804-52); widely travelled in Europe, the Middle East and Russia, she was acquainted with many of the leading figures of her day, including Goethe, Liszt and members of the Bonaparte family. The most important themes of her writings are the injustice suffered by women in Germany and elsewhere; the institution of marriage; and corruption at the courts of the ruling despots in her homeland, with indifference to the suffering of their subjects, aggravated by conditions in the factories of the industrial revolution.
Professor Powell traces the life and environment of Therese; discusses her fiction; reproduces herimpressions of contemporary European literature, theatre and fine art; and considers her ideas on education and the human condition. Taken together, the works also provide much information about the day-to-day fabric of life in nineteeth-century Germany, especially in their manifold references to, among others, George Sand, Gluck, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Strauss.

Tim Mehigan

The Critical Response to Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities

$110.00

A study of the most significant international scholarship on Musil's famous novel.

The Austrian writer Robert Musil ranks among the foremost novelists of the 20th century. Despite a series of lesser but well-regarded shorter works, his literary reputation rests almost entirely on his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities), a life-work in the truest sense, which became the focus of all his energies and thinking from 1924 until his death in 1942. This study analyzes the principal trends in scholarship on the novel from the 1960s to the present. It contrasts earlier criticism, which foregrounded the eponymous central character's search for identity against the background of subject theory or mysticism, with more recent criticism, whichhas focused on aesthetic and ethical approaches to the novel within the broader context of theories of value. A focal chapter in the study centers on the persistent difficulty critics have encountered with the idea of "Eigenschaftslosigkeit," the state of being without qualities named in the novel's title.

Tim Mehigan is Associate Professor of German and Head of the Department of Germanic Studies and Russian at the University of Melbourne.

The Critical Response to Robert Musil's <I>The Man without Qualities</I>

M. Thomas Hester, Christopher Cobb

Renaissance Papers 2002

$95.00

Annual collection of essays, this year treating works by Donne, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Spenser, among other topics.

Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The conference accepts papers on all subjects relating to the Renaissance -- music, art, history, literature, etc. -- from scholars all over North America and the world. Of the nine essays in the 2002 volume, three have to do with John Donne; among the topics here are Donne and Pietro Aretino, Donne and "All the World," andauthorial intention in the Holy Sonnets. Two essays deal with Shakespeare, specifically the discourse of dilution in 2 Henry IV and the Ovidian underworld in Othello. Other essays treat Marvell and the temporality of paranoia; poetry, patronage, and identity in Spenser's The Faerie Queene; and the visual culture of the Elizabethan prodigy house.

Contributors: Nicholas Crawford, Dennis Flynn, Heather Hirschfeld, Pamela Royston Macfie, Anne E. McIlhaney, Graham Roebuck, Gary Stringer, James M. Sutton, Alzada Tipton.

M. Thomas Hester is professor of English at North Carolina State University

Tim Mehigan

Heinrich von Kleist und die Aufklärung

$110.00

A collection of essays examining the influence of Kant on Heinrich von Kleist.

The great and eccentric German writer Heinrich von Kleist, famous for his enigmatic dramas and novellas, read the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1801. A series of letters written around this time speak of the distresshe felt as he absorbed the implications of Kantian thought. This sense of distress -- long considered important to understanding Kleist's subsequent works -- has become known to Kleist scholars as the 'Kant crisis,' and marks Kleist's abandonment of the hope of gaining metaphysical certainty about his life. But it has never been established which texts of Kant Kleist actually read, how well he understood them, and why they precipitated such despair. Kleisthimself -- aside from one paraphrasing of Kant in a letter of 1801 -- was never explicit about what he called this 'sad philosophy.' Yet the distress seems never to have left him and remains an abiding preoccupation throughout his dramas and stories.
This collection of essays, all in German language, represents the most recent work of prominent scholars in the field. It takes the pervasive sense of metaphysical crisis in Kleist's works as a startingpoint. In the context of Kleist's response to Kant, the essays deal with his subversive treatment of the literary motifs and genres of his day, and with the ambiguity of truth in his works -- for his characters and readers alike.In tracing the source of crisis to specific writings of Kant and to other Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and Wieland, the essays show Kleist's complex dialogue with the Enlightenment to be an important new approach to understanding this notoriously difficult writer.

Tim Mehigan is Professor of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Dietrich Scheunemann

Expressionist Film -- New Perspectives

$38.95

New essays by leading scholars giving a new picture of the variety of German expressionist cinema.

This volume of fresh essays by leading scholars develops a new approach to expressionist film. For nearly half a century Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen have shapedthe understanding of the cinema of this period. However, fifty years on, there is a growing awareness that a new account is overdue. This attempt to rewrite the story of expressionist cinema begins with a fundamentally new interpretation of Dr. Caligari, and together with fresh views of other expressionist classics, offers new perspectives on important alternative film styles and genres that emerged in films by such eminent directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Joe May, Fritz Lang, Karl Grune, F. W. Murnau, and E. A. Dupont. In pursuing such variety, the book strives for a picture of the cinema in the early years of Weimar that in thematic as well as stylistic terms reflects the vibrant, multifaceted cultural and political developments of the period. The book is a joint venture of the Centre for European Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh, the Institute for Film Studies at the University of Mainz, and the German Film Museum in Frankfurt.

The late Dietrich Scheunemann was Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh and wrote and edited several books on German literature and on film and media.

Wulf Koepke

Johann Gottfried Herder

$90.00

New studies looking at Herder's contribution to 18th-century intellectual debate in the light of the modern trend towards interdisciplinarity.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) wrote at an age when the polyhistoric scholar or amateur was replaced by the professional academic specialist. A universalist who fought against narrow-minded specialised scholarship and artificial boundaries between disciplines, Herder himself had seminal insights into a variety of disciplines, from aesthetics to education. He made constant efforts to achieve a synthesis of human knowledge, notably in his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind), 1784-91. However, his monumental oeuvre can be criticised as mere 'fragments', and he has been faulted by professionalised scholarship of the last two centuries, including his own teacher Immanuel Kant, for his flowery style and his 'vagueness'.
The nineteen studies in this volume provide a debate on Herder's contribution to the intellectual discourseof the later eighteenth century in the context of momentous changes in the natural and social sciences. They give new insights into the psychology of the younger Herder, on historiography, a new concept of education, and Herder'sposition in theology.

Melissa Knox

Oscar Wilde in the 1990s

$110.00

An examination of the most significant literary criticism on Wilde at the turn of the century.

In 1891, Oscar Wilde defined 'the highest criticism' as 'the record of one's own soul, and insisted that only by 'intensifying his own personality' could the critic interpret the personality and work of others. This book exploreswhat Wilde meant by that statement, arguing that it provides the best standard for judging literary criticism about Wilde a century after his death. Melissa Knox examines a range of Wilde criticism in English -- including the work of Lawrence Danson, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Ed Cohen, and Julia Prewitt Brown. Applying Wilde's standards to his critics, Knox discovers that the best of them take to heart Wilde's idea of the aim of criticism -- 'to see theobject as in itself it really is not.' By this, Wilde appreciates Walter Pater's profound observation that everyone sees through a 'thick wall of personality' and that, therefore, objectivity as conceived by Matthew Arnold does not exist. Admiring Pater, Wilde became a prophet for Freud, his exact contemporary. Their intellectual sympathies, made obvious in Knox's exegesis, help to make the case for Wilde as a modern, not a Victorian.

Melissa Knox's book Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide was published in 1994. She teaches at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Philip Payne

A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil

$49.95

A fresh and extensive look at the works of the great Austrian novelist in the context of the German and Austrian culture of his time.

A panel of authors, critics, and academics convened by the Literaturhaus in Munich in 1999 voted Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities the most important German novel of the 20th century. Their collective judgment restson strong foundations: on the work's encyclopedic compass, embracing intellectual, social, political, and cultural concerns embodied in themes of striking originality; on its probing of key issues of Austrian and German life fromthe first four decades of the twentieth century; on the brilliance of its language, unsurpassed by any other 20th-century author writing in German. While this Companion gives The Man without Qualities the central focus it deserves, it also contributes to a deeper understanding of Musil's other significant works; in harnessing a team of established scholars from North America and Europe to the task of providing an assessment of Musil's work, it setsnew standards in scope and originality. The analyses are embedded in an appreciation of the intellectual contexts of Musil's writing, yielding fresh insights into Musil's artistic accomplishment and into his place in the Austrianand German cultural traditions of the 20th century.

Contributors: Philip Payne, Klaus Amann, Galin Tihanov, Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Silvia Bonacchi, Christian Rogowski, Peter Henninger, Walter Fanta, Karl Corino, GeneseGrill, Burton Pike, Rüdiger Görner

Philip Payne is emeritus Professor of German Studies at Lancaster University, UK; Graham Bartram is retired as Senior Lecturer in German Studies at Lancaster University, UK; and Galin Tihanov is the George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, UK.

A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil

Wiebke Strehl

Theodor Storm's Immensee

$110.00

A chronological and comprehensive survey of the most important English and German language criticism about the novella in historical context.

Theodor Storm (1817-88), one of the leading literary Realists of the nineteenth century, achieved world-wide popularity with the novella Immensee in 1849. The work, which Storm himself referred to as a 'Perle deutscher Poesie' (pearl of German poetry) reached over thirty editions and was translated into 17 languages by the time of the author's death. But in addition to being called a masterpiece by such leading literary lights of the day as TheodorFontane and Paul Heyse, Immensee also attracted its share of criticism from the first, for instance as a mere sentimental love story. Then in the 1930s and forties Storm's novella was seized upon by right-wing critics as appropriate National Socialist reading material, which had the effect of sullying its reputation somewhat long after 1945. Since the 1960s Immensee's critical reputation has been rehabilitated and both novella and Storm himself analyzed from a variety of viewpoints, including Marxism and democratic humanitarianism. Strehl's book chronicles the highlights of this critical history.

Wiebke Strehl is assistant professor of German at the University of South Carolina.

Donna R. White

Dancing with Dragons

$75.00

Le Guin criticism examined, showing how her reputation as a leading American writer has developed.

Ursula K. Le Guin began to provoke attention in the late 1960s with the publication of A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). The former, a young adult fantasy, established Le Guin as America's foremost contemporary fantasist, a reputation which continues to this day. Both books started Le Guin on the road to being one of the most award-winning writers in America, as author of realistic fiction, historical fiction,children's literature, fantasy, poetry, reviews, and critical essays.
The moral force and stylistic sophistication of Le Guin's work demand a critical reponse that reviewers and scholars have been quick to provide. As an academically trained critic in her own right, Le Guin has never shied from critical confrontation, though preferring discussion to warfare. For thirty years, she has maintained a dialogue with her critics, exploring with them her changing views on feminism, environmentalism, and utopia. Dancing with Dragons brings together for the first time the various strands of Le Guin criticism to show how the author's dialogue with the critics has informed and influenced her work and her own critical stance, and explores how her reputation as a major voice in American letters has developed.
Professor DONNA WHITE teaches at Clemson University.

Siegfried Mews

Günter Grass and His Critics

$39.95

A comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the controversial German author's works.

When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum. SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible, blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press (and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception of Grass's works.

Siegfried Mews is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Louis Mackey

Fact, Fiction, and Representation

$75.00

First ever full-length study of four works by Gilbert Sorrentino, the contemporary American novelist.

Gilbert Sorrentino is the most innovative and experimental writer now working in America. In a long and still continuing series of novels he has broken down the barriers of fictional realism in ways which undercut the traditionalboundaries between fact and fiction, exposing the problematical character of representation. However, although his position in contemporary American fiction is assured, he has not yet received the serious critical attention his work deserves. This volume is the first full length treatment of his work in depth and detail; it examines four novels published by Sorrentino in the 1980s (Crystal Vision, Odd Number, Rose Theatre and Misterioso), aiming to identify the critical and philosophical problems raised in his work and assessing his achievements in dealing with them.

Gail K. Hart

Tragedy in Paradise

$90.00

Examination of the German genre of `bourgeois tragedy', bringing out its underlying characteristics.

Bürgerliches Trauerspiel' or bourgeois tragedy is the most popularly acclaimed and critically documented form of German drama. From the mid-eighteenth century, some of Germany's greatest dramatists turned away from classical subjects to focus instead on the intricate internecine struggles of the middle-class family. This book views bourgeois tragedy and related forms of 'family' drama as depicting the enactment of a threat to stability and domestic order,organised so that the threat is defeated and the anxieties of the predominantly middle-class audience relieved; the author argues that these threats are represented as emanating from female figures who oppose and challenge the authority and order of a father or husband. Texts examined include Klinger's Sturm und Drang, Goethe's Stella and Die natürliche Tochter, Kleist's 'Über das Marionettentheater' and Hebbel's Maria Magdalene.

Joseph Riehl

That Dangerous Figure

$75.00

The English poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834) stimulates reactions that often lie outside the boundaries of literary criticism, reactions that are often motivated by ideological, cultural or political concerns. He poses particularly difficult, even unanswerable, questions that often provoke intemperate anger or great affection in readers. Historically, the first critical misunderstanding of Lamb is to see him as a radical; later he is canonized a domestic saint; in the 1930s he is a reactionary bourgeois. More recently, he is understood as a conscious artist; first, by New Critics as a transcendent optimist, then, in the post-structuralist version, as a tormented soul creating his artifice out of the limitations of human life. This study, a comprehensive history of reactions to Lamb, proposes that perhaps Lamb is a literary 'trickster' who delights in raising just those contradictions of modern life which thosewho attempt a systematic style of criticism would like to ignore.

George C. Schoolfield

Helsinki of the Czars Finland's Capital

$90.00

Traces the turbulent history of Helsinki in a period of rapid change, examining its society and culture from Russian to Finn.

This book traces the cultural and social history of Helsinki during a period in which, as the capital of Russia's semi-autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, it underwent radical changes. The author shows how, from a mercantile and shipping town, Helsinki became the seat of the government and university, the notable city-planner Johan Albrecht Ehrenström and the genius of Karl Ludvig Engel, an architect from Berlin, making it into a Neo-Classical show-piece. However, by the 1860s a swiftly growing Finnish population demanded their own rights; Professor Schoolfield describes the many transformations which took place in an increasingly bilingual environment, and how national-romantic passions led to a remarkable outburst of creative activity - such as the music of Sibelius and the paintings of Edelfeldt and Gallen-Kallela, the architecture of Saarinen and Sonck, and the literature of Tavaststjerna and Eio Leino.The political and social tensions culminated in Finland's independence in 1917, and the bloody Finnish Civil War in the following year.

Raymond Furness

Zarathustra's Children

$110.00

A study of the enormous influence of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche on turn-of-the-century German literature.

The aim of this book is to explore "that post-Nietzschean archipelago of German literature which no one mind can hope to map, let alone inhabit" (Michael Hamburger) and to introduce it to the English-speaking reader for the firsttime, in accessible form. The study starts from the assumption that the daring imagery and cosmic sweep of Thus Spake Zarathustra provided the impetus for the creation of visionary epics and cosmological poetic universes. The book is original in that it presents for the first time a selection of writers hitherto regarded as impossible of access and reduces their epic scope to manageable proportions while preserving their essential meaning. Among thewriters treated are Alfred Mombert, Theodor Däubler, Rudolf Pannwitz, Ludwig Derleth, Alfred Schuler, Ludwig Klages, Christian Morgenstern, and the members of the Friedrichshagen Circle. Furness draws on the most recent scholarship and provides a fascinating account of a 'lost generation.' The book will be of interest to Nietzsche scholars, to students of Lebensphilosophie, and to those interested in German literature around the turn of the century. It will be of special interest to those drawn to the creation of myths and to radical religious thought.

Raymond Furness is professor and former chair of German at St.Andrews University, Scotland. He has published widely on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German literature.

Martin Swales

Reading Goethe

$36.95

At last an engaging and highly readable guide to the works and significance of Goethe.

The year 1999 saw the 250th anniversary of the birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer. Appropriately, literary scholars within Germany and beyond paid tribute to this remarkable talent. But a number of commentators also noted that Goethe is often revered rather than read, known of rather than known. This study remedies this state of affairs by offering an introduction to Goethe and his works for the English-speaking reader -- now inpaperback and with all quotations. The authors concentrate on the literary work and offer analyses that represent an impassioned, but by no means uncritical, advocacy -- one that seeks to persuade both academic critics and general readers alike that Goethe is one of the key figures of European modernity. To an extent that is virtually unique in modern literature, Goethe was active in a whole number of literary genres. He was a superb poet, unrivaled in the variety of his expressive modes, and in his ability to combine intellectual sophistication withexperiential immediacy. He also wrote short stories and novels throughout his life, ranging from the The Sorrows of Young Werther, to The Elective Affinities. He was also a highly skilled dramatist, both in the historical mode and in the classical verse-drama. Above all else, Goethe is the author of Faust: a work that attempts -- and achieves -- more than any other modern European drama.

Martin Swales is Professor of German at University College London. Erika Swales is College Lecturer and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Erika A. Metzger

A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke

$38.95

Illuminates the major aspects of the works of Germany's greatest 20th-century poet.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is the best-known German poet of his generation and is widely appreciated today by readers in Europe, the United States, and world-wide. Because of the inventiveness and musicality of his poetic language and the visionary intuition of his thinking, Rilke's influence extends well beyond poetry to include religion, philosophy, the social sciences, and the arts. His works have been widely translated into English, and new enderings of such poem cycles as The Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus appear frequently. Critics regard Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as a seminal modern novel. The Companion to Rilke provides essential, up-to-date essays by top Rilke scholars on a wide range of the major aspects of Rilke's life and works. The volume follows the chronology of Rilke's career, emphasizing those works that have met with the greatest critical interest. Among the topics covered are: Rilke's life and thought; the writings before 1902; Das Stunden-Buch and Das Buch der Bilder; the Neue Gedichte, The Cornet and other brief narratives; Malte Laurids Brigge; The Duino Elegies; The Sonnets to Orpheus; Rilke as a poet in French; Rilke and the visual arts.
Erika and Michael Metzger (SUNY Buffalo) have written extensively on various aspects ofGerman literature and have edited significant Baroque texts.

A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke

John Williams

Fiction as False Document

$75.00

Survey of the reception history of E.L. Doctorow, the controversial American author.

E.L. Doctorow, now a major member of the American literary establishment, has survived the controversy over his overtly political novels to become recognised as an artist whose place in the American tradition has been earned by his extension of it. This book surveys the reception of his novels, which span the era that saw traditionalist formalist criticism decline in favour of post-structural theories of language and culture. When Welcome to Hard Times (1960) was published, the scant notice it received praised its well-formed structure; by the time of Doctorow's major success, Ragtime (1975), the issues of politics, culture, and history loomed large on the critical landscape, and by the early 1980s, his work was seen overwhelmingly in terms of its postmodern style and scepticism, to such an extent that the theory of criticism drew attention away from his works themselves. Now, with current critical trends moving away from pure theory, his fiction has again become the main focus, with his later work as well as Ragtime receiving attention.

Theodor Fontane, William L. Zwiebel

The Stechlin

$39.95

First English translation of the final work of Theodor Fontane, one of Germany's most significant novelists.

Theodor Fontane (1819-98), widely regarded as Germany's most significant novelist between Goethe and Thomas Mann, pioneered the German novel of manners and upper-class society, following a trend in European fiction of the period.The Stechlin is Fontane's last book and his political testament. Like Effi Briest, his great work on the place of women in Bismarck's empire, it is set at the apex of the Wilhelmine era, both in Berlin and on the estate of a Prussian Junker on the shores of Lake Stechlin. It is a significant historical and cultural document, probably the finest chronicle of the lifestyle of the German upper classes in the late nineteenth century; Fontane portrays the best in the life and ways of the passing Prussian aristocracy, while describing his hopes for the future of Germany and its nobility, which were never to be fully realized. Although this novel has been translated into many languages, it has never before been available in English; this edition thus fills an important gap in the significant works of European literature accessible to English readers.

Stuart Atkins

Essays on Goethe

$90.00

Selection of the most important essays, collected here for the first time, by one of the world's foremost Goethe scholars.

This volume contains some twenty definitive essays on the literary works of Goethe by STUART ATKINS, best known for his magisterial contributions to Goethe scholarship and his translation of Faust; although their importance has long been recognised, they have never before been collected in an accessible form. Their leitmotiv is the defence and clarification of the term 'classicism', seen as embracing style, motifs, modality and ethics,from antiquity to the Renaissance and later to the Romantics; they also seek to show how each variety of classicism is relevant to Goethe. The whole range of Goethe's work is covered, from his early letters to his last play, Die Wette, several studies of aspects of Faust are included. A complete bibliography of his scholarly publications completes the volume.

Jeffrey Grossman

The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire

$90.00

Explores the uses of Yiddish language in German literary and cultural texts 1781 until the late nineteenth century.

This book explores the uses of Yiddish language in German literary and cultural texts from the onset of Jewish civil emancipation in the Germanies in 1781 until the late 19th century. Showing the various functions Yiddish assumedat this time, the study crosses traditional boundaries between literary and non-literary texts. It focuses on responses to Yiddish in genres of literature ranging from drama to language handbooks, from cultural criticism to the realist novel in order to address broader issues of literary representation and Jewish-German relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Professor Grossman shows how the emergence of attitudes toward Jews and Yiddish is directly related to linguistic theories and cultural ideologies that bear a complex relationship to the changing social and political institutions of the time. Amidst the rise of national ideologies and modern anti-Semitism, the increasing consolidation of institutions, and the drive to cultural homogeneity in the 18th- and 19th-century German context, Yiddish functioned as an anarchic element that, in the view of its opponents, "threatened" to dissolve German nationalculture. Grossman locates the response to Yiddish in the context of historical events (the Hep Hep Riots of 1819, the Revolution of 1848) and institutional changes (Jewish legal emancipation, the promotion of Bildung as an educational and cultural ideal). In its methodology and its focus, this study seeks to show how the conflicted responses to the Yiddish language point to the problems that connected and frequently divided Jews and Germans as they soughtto re-invent themselves for a new and unsettling context.

The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire

Matthew Stewart

Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time

$29.95

A handbook to Hemingway's famous collection of short stories that emphasizes its status as a modernist masterwork.

The volume of collected short stories and vignettes In Our Time was Ernest Hemingway's first commercial publication. Its appearance in 1925 launched the full-fledged literary career of this century's most famous American fiction writer. And while other later works of Hemingway have eclipsed In Our Time's fame, none of Hemingway's subsequent works would again carry the degree of experimentation found in this distinctly modernist masterwork. Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time: A Guide for Students and Readers is a well-paced, lucidly written handbook intended to guide university students and teaching faculty towards a better understanding of this complex work. It provides a reading of each story and vignette, while simultaneously stressing the status of In Our Time as a discrete volume. Included are discussions of the book's biographical and historical background, and considerations of Hemingway's prose style, theories of writing, formal achievements, his literary mentors and influences, and the relation between In Our Time and his later works.

Matthew C. Stewart isAssociate Professor of Humanities and Rhetoric at Boston University.

Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingway's <I>In Our Time</I>

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Lynne Tatlock, Lynne Tatlock

Their Pavel

$29.95

Translation of nineteenth-century novel of life in a still-feudal Moravian village.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) is Austria's most important nineteenth-century woman writer, but her works have remained largely unknown to English speakers, even her most important, the compelling Their Pavel, firstpublished serially in 1887. Based on a true incident, Their Pavel investigates the troubled social relations of a Moravian village that is endowed with the right of local governance but steeped in the habits of its feudalrelationship to the local barony. The novel explores the parallel fates of the children of a hanged murderer and thief. Milada, the appealing and alert daughter, is adopted on a whim by the aging baroness, while Pavel, the awkwardand taciturn son, is thrown upon the uncertain mercy of the village, but both suffer the stigma of their father's crime. In her sometimes grimly humorous picture of village life, the author spares neither the Catholic Church northe landed aristocracy nor the villagers themselves.

Lynne Tatlock is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington Universityin St. Louis.

Hjalmar Bergman

Jac the Clown

$75.00

English translation of the last and arguably the most significant of Hjalmar Bergman's works.

Hjalmar Bergman is one of the most important figures in twentieth-century Swedish literature, and his last novel, Jac the Clown (1930), is widely considered to be his best and most innovative work. Shaped by his own experiences as a Hollywood script writer, and tragi-comic in tone, it tells the story of Benjamin 'Benbé' Borck, who travels to America to visit his famous artist cousin, the 'clown' of the title, Jac Tracbac, alias Jonathan Borck, Bergman's alter ego; his trip is bizarre and almost surreal, as is the eponymous Jac, whom Bergman depicts as attempting to break out of the commercial exploitation of Hollywood. In his catechism at the end of the novel Jac makes public the origins and purpose of his (and Bergman's) art; depending on and provoking an audience's laughter, it is shown to spring from and reflect the fear and anguish which are central to the human condition, but also to allow theseemotions to be dispelled through laughter. Dr Weiss's sensitive translation brilliantly conveys the spirit and tone of the original.

Karl F. Otto

Bibliographia Kleschiana

$99.00

Bibliography, with introduction, of the literary works of two generations of the Klesch family: writers, preachers, poets and scholars.

During the second half of the seventeenth century two generations of the extraordinary Klesch family produced hundreds of literary works; they chronicle the hardships of war and exile, and contributed significantly to the development of a distinctive Protestant literary tradition centred in the Zips area of present-day Slovakia. The Kleschs' works also offer unique insights into German exiles and the role of German language societies in aiding them; the Lutheran community and the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Hungary; sermons and spiritualistic literature; and apocalypticism in the late seventeenth century.
This volume provides a bibliography to the writings of the Klesch family; the introduction explains the significance of the family and its works and outlines their lives.

William Crisman

The Crises of Language and Dead Signs in Ludwig Tieck's Prose Fiction

$99.00

Critical account of the works of Ludwig Tieck, the German Romantic writer, from a linguistic viewpoint.

Although twentieth-century literary criticism has focused on language as a topic of discussion, critical evalutions of Romanticism and Romantic writers rarely deal with it in terms derived from the philosophy of language. This book evaluates the most prolific German Romanticist, Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), from such a linguistic viewpoint, arguing that concerns in his work can be seen as forerunners of later language analysis, from speech-act theory to theories of reference. It covers Tieck's whole career, from his youth to his final novel, Vittoria Accorombona, providing a comprehensive analysis of this major author's work; it will also be of interest to those interested in the linguistic aspects of Romanticism.

The Crises of <I>Language and Dead Signs</I> in Ludwig Tieck's Prose Fiction

Kathleen Foley-Beining

The Body and Eucharistic Devotion in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg's 'Meditations'

$75.00

New study of the writings of Catharina von Greiffenberg, the German Baroque religious author.

This book presents a fresh view of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, the German Baroque devotional writer, and her largely neglected prose work Die andächtigen Betrachtungen (Meditations). The Meditations show thatvon Greiffenberg's identity as a woman profoundly influenced her perception of the Incarnation, and associate her closely with earlier generations of German female visionaries, such as Hrotswitha von Gandersheim, Mechthild von Magdeburg, and Christine Ebner; the author argues that von Greiffenberg ignores the long-established denigration of the female and the body, linking and elevating women's biological and spiritual experience, while also demonstratingher own corporeal religious experience.

The Body and Eucharistic Devotion in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg's 'Meditations'

Ivar Lo-Johansson

Peddling My Wares

$90.00

Critically acclaimed novel from one of Sweden's most prominent 20th-century writers.

Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901-1990), a leading literary figure in Sweden, was the last surviving member of the so-called 'thirties generation', largely self-educated writers from impoverished backgrounds, who wrote about their roots. Inthe 1950s he began a series of autobiographical novels examining the experiences of his youthful alter-ego; while his tone is ironical, he does not diminish the reader's sympathy for the hardships the protagonist undergoes. Gärdfarihandlaren (Peddling My Wares), the second of these works, draws on Lo-Johansson's own life when, aged nineteen, he spent a summer cycling through Sweden trying to peddle small goods; his protagonist is fleeing the horizons of his poverty-stricken childhood while trying to come to terms with his own identity. Through a series of adventures, some comical, some disturbing, the hero gradually learns that a romantic dream of total freedom is both impossible and foolish. This novel has enjoyed wide critical and popular acclaim, and has been reissued in Swedish many times since its first appearance in 1953; first English translation.

Erika A. Metzger, Michael Metzger

Reading Andreas Gryphius

$90.00

This book traces the widely varying critical reception of Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664), the greatest German poet of the seventeenth century.

This book traces the widely varying critical reception of Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664), the greatest German poet of the seventeenth century. Although his work was respected in his native Silesia both in his lifetime, and in the years after his death, his reputation was almost eclipsed during the later eighteenth century. However, new interpretations of him by Romantic authors, and an emerging ideological consensus about Germany's national literature, brought about Gryphius' critical rehabilitation and enhanced appreciation of the qualities of his work; being roughly contemporary with great English and French playwrights, his literary reputation became enmeshed in the nationalist and ideological rivalries of Europe. More recently, commentators have concentrated on the unique character of his poetic attitude.
In this volume, the authors outline the trends of his reception in German-speaking countries and provide the background for his critical history; an epilogue deals with the question of whether he can be seen as the German equivalent of Shakespeare or Calderón. The book also presents, for the first time in English, extensive excerpts from Gryphius criticism, from contemporary commentators (including those close to the poet) to modern critics such as Walter Benjamin.

Hans Wagener

Carl Zuckmayer Criticism

$75.00

Critical survey of the most significant scholarly literature devoted to the neglected German playwright Carl Zuckmayer.

Carl Zuckmayer (1890-1971) ranks with Bertolt Brecht and Gerhart Hauptmann as one of the most popular and significant German dramatists of the twentieth century; The Merry Vineyard (1925), marking the end of German Expressionism, his comedy The Captain of Köpenick (1931), a scathing satire of German militarism, and The Devil's General (1946), about a Nazi general and German resistance, are among the most frequently performed plays in German theatrical history. Wagener traces the development of Zuckmayer criticism from reviews to general assessments, from a biographical approach to the New Criticism and finally feminist criticism, paying particular attention tothe role of the Carl Zuckmayer Society in the critical discourse about this neglected author.

Ian F. Roe

Franz Grillparzer

$75.00

A comprehensive survey of literary criticism about one of Austria's most significant dramatists.

Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) was the leading Austrian dramatist of the nineteenth century; his plays were and are frequently performed at the famous Burgtheater in Vienna. However, his works have always eluded easy definition; hehimself acknowledged that his plays were shaped by many different literary influences. Critics agree only that he is a fascinating synthesis of contrasting elements, and recently the modern aspects of his work have been stressed,such as his questioning of moral absolutes and his refusal to offer easy solutions. The psychological realism of his character portrayal and the subtleties of his language also reveal Grillparzer as a writer whose stylistic characteristics foreshadow those of modern literature.
In this first comprehensive survey of the critical literature devoted to Grillparzer, Dr Roe highlights the main critical debates and provides a chronological account of the developments, through misunderstanding or neglect, to his political appropriation by the Nazis, and the recent domination of sociological and psychoanalytical schools of thought.

Franz Kempf

Everyone's Darling

$75.00

A history of Kafka criticism offering a synthesis of the myriad scholarly viewpoints.

Over the past eighty years Kafka has been appropriated by every conceivable critical camp, encompassing the entire gamut of the intellectual tradition of the West, including its postmodern and feminist critics. Yet, as this studyshows for the first time, there is an underlying unity in all the diversity. What emerges from the critical Tower of Babel is that, at the core of Kafka's art, there lies a consciously constructed ambiguity which cannot be resolved - except through over-simplification - but which nevertheless appears to make sense to some readers. Professor Kempf's book combines survey and case study, using a selection of major critical voices, which fruitfully illuminateand comment on each other, to highlight the historical developments and discontinuities in the vast amount of critical literature devoted to Kafka.

Anne Fuchs

Ghetto Writing

$110.00

Fresh articles about a much neglected genre, fiction from and about the Jewish ghetto.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries ghetto fiction played an important part in the expression of a particularly German-Jewish quest for identity. The volume Ghetto Writing takes the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leopold Kompert's collection of ghetto stories Aus dem Ghetto (1848) to fill a gap and give testimony to an important genre that has been unduly silenced in the literary histories of the post-war period. The volume presents some 15 articles by scholars from Scandinavia, Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland whose contributions offer new analyses of ghetto writing by well known authors such as Heinrich Heine and Joseph Roth, andcompletely new material on forgotten ghetto writers who deserve to be rediscovered, such as Alexander Granach. The articles cover various types of ghetto writing, ranging from ghetto fiction in the tradition of Leopold Kompert and Karl Emil Franzos, to diaries, travelogues, autobiography, and even contemporary German HipHop and Rap lyrics.

James Trainer

Weimar Correspondence

$90.00

Edition of the correspondence of Friedrich Tieck, the 19th-century German sculptor, giving personal accounts of Schlegel, de Staël, and the Goethe circle.

This volume reproduces for the first time the lively correspondencebetween the sculptor Friedrich Tieck (1776-1851), and his sisterSophie, and their Weimar friend Amalie von Voigt, in the period 1804 to1837, which offers interesting insights into many aspects of the socialand cultural life of the period. Tieck's circle of close acquaintancesincluded such luminaries as August Schlegel (1767-1845), Madame deStaël (1766-1817), and Christian Daniel Rauch(1777-1857), the fellowsculptor with whom he worked closely both in Rome and Carrara;moreover, Christian van Voigt, Amalie's brother, was the son of theWeimar minister of the same name, a close friend and confidant ofGoethe,and well connected with the intellectual and political leadersof the day. Private insights into the characters, aspirations and fearsof some of the most prominent contemporary figures are thus revealedthrough these personal documents.
The letters, preserved inarchives in Weimar, have been transcribed and edited from the originaland are presented in the original German with an introduction and notesin English.

Robert Weninger

Framing a Novelist

$75.00

First survey of the most recent critical literature devoted to Arno Schmidt, the controversial German author.

Recognised as one of post-war Germany's most idiosyncratic and notorious novelists, Arno Schmidt (1914-1979) was both an eccentric literary innovator and provocative literary historian. Although his works make no concessions to the general reader, Schmidt has proved astonishingly popular, challenging the assumptions of many critics that he was a quixotic elitist devoid of a wider audience.
This volume is the only study in either English or German tochart the field of Schmidt criticism comprehensively since 1970. Focusing on the ways in which critics have attempted to `frame' their subject, and taking modern literary theory into account, the author provides a thematic outline of Schmidt criticism as well as critical analyses of the scholarship on selected works.

Irmgard Wagner

Critical Approaches to Goethe's Classical Dramas

$90.00

Examination of the critical history of three of Goethe's most important dramas, relating it to the wider field of German literary criticism.

The critical attention given to Goethe over two centuries has ranged in tone from adulatory to iconoclastic, but has always reflected the central position he occupied in German literary scholarship and cultural life. The three plays analysed here are prime examples of German Classicism, and have thus provoked strong reactions in the struggle between modernists and conservatives, engaging critics in fundamental questions of aesthetics, ethics, politics, andideology. In tracing the history of their criticism, this book also explores the development of academic literary studies in Germany from their beginning in the nineteenth century through the turbulent events of the twentieth, presenting a fascinating image of literary scholarship intertwined with controversies concerning the German national identity and Germany's place in the world.

Critical Approaches to Goethe's Classical Dramas

Ward B. Lewis

The Ironic Dissident

$75.00

First survey of the critical reception of Wedekind's drama, poetry and prose in an historical chronology.

This volume examines the criticism generated not just by Wedekind's drama, but also by his often neglected poetry and prose, giving summaries of the historically important trends in their reception and offering a chronological survey of critical voices. Wedekind's works appeared from 1890 to shortly before his death in 1918: most were controversial, outraging the conventions, and late Victorian censorship restricted stage performance. During the Weimar Republic, Wedekind's work enjoyed great popularity on the stage, and although he was marginalised by the Third Reich, his reputation continued to grow after the Second World War; critics have emphasised his influence on Bertolt Brecht and the Expressionist movement (with which he is sometimes identified), and the Theatre of the Absurd, as represented by the Swiss playwrights Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The late 1980s marked a renaissance in Wedekindresearch; however, The Ironic Dissident is the first work in any language to engage with the criticism of his poetry, prose, and individual dramas within an historical chronology.

William C. McDonald

Fifteenth-Century Studies Vol. 22

$110.00

Latest volume of annual publication covering a variety of aspects of life in the fifteenth century.

Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since its foundation in 1977 as the publication arm for the Fifteenth-Century Symposium, and aims to include essays on all aspects of life during the time, medicine, philosophy, painting, religion, science, history, ritual and custom, music, and poetry. It covers a period which defies consensus on various fundamental issues; indeed, some dispute that the fifteenth century can be regarded as part of themiddle ages, arguing that it is a time of transition to the modern age. Fifteenth-Century Studies takes no dogmatic view on the vexed questions the period presents, rather aiming to encourage a dispassionate assessment offifteenth-century life and literature, examining the preoccupations of those living in the period and attempting to identify the threads which bind the achievements of figures as diverse as Malory, Machiavelli, Copernicus, Caxton,Margery Kempe, Hans Holbein, Joan of Arc, and Christine de Pizan. There is also a wide-ranging review section.

Markus Wessendorf

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 43

$80.00

The leading scholarly publication on Brecht; volume 43 contains a wealth of articles on diverse topics and a reconstruction of the two-chorus version of The Exception and the Rule.

Published for the International Brecht Society by Camden House, the Brecht Yearbook is the central scholarly forum for discussion of Brecht's life and work and of topics of interest to him, especially the politics of literature and theater in a global context. It encourages a wide variety of perspectives and approaches and, like Brecht, is committed to the use value of literature, theater, and theory.
Volume 43 opens with a reconstruction of Brecht's two-chorus version of The Exception and the Rule (Reiner Steinweg) and continues with a selection of Helmut Heißenbüttel's reviews of Brecht's work. Four articles (by Christine Künzel, Carsten Mindt, Judith Niehaus,and Sebastian Schuller) address Brechtian aspects of Gisela Elsner's novels. The next two essays (by Hunter Bivens and Friedemann Weidauer) revisit Brecht's reflections on affect and empathy. Also included are papers from the 2016IBS "Recycling Brecht" Symposium: on Brecht's recycling of Lenin in his "neue Dramatik" (Joseph Dial), on Paul Celan as a reconfiguration of Brecht (Paul Peters), on Brecht's adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus (MartinRevermann), and on Hilary Mantel's Brechtian reconfiguration of Thomas Cromwell (Markus Wessendorf). The volume features Richard Schröder's farewell lecture on Brecht's Life of Galileo and an essay by Ulrich Plass on BerndStegemann's allegedly Brechtian reclamation of critical realism. It concludes with Zhang Wei's interview with the Chinese dramaturg, playwright, and Brecht translator Li Jianming.

Editor Markus Wessendorf is a Professorin the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu.

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 43

Vibha Bakshi Gokhale

Walking the Tightrope

$75.00

Feminist account of the chief writings of Therese Huber, the important 19th-c. German author.

The German writer Therese Huber (1764-1829) lived at a time when women's activity outside the home was widely condemned, but the need to support themselves and their families forced many female writers to turn towards writing as ameans of earning their livelihood. Her prolific career, encompassing novels, short prose narratives and translations from French into German, besides the editing of a newspaper, demonstrates her ability to express herself while conforming to the male literary establishment.
This study examines Huber's short prose narratives, showing the influence of various factors on women's writing, and the ways in which female writers incorporated dissent from the conventions into their works without jeopardising their professional and personal lives. Huber's works are both moralising, persuading her readers to become good housewives and mothers, and dissenting, constructing characters who refuse to abide by the norms. The author's feminist analysis of her narratives brings out their subtext of protest, showing how Huber negotiates for women's rights to self-expression.

Professor Markus Wessendorf

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 45

$80.00

Volume 45 is focused on the theme "Brecht Among Strangers," with articles on a range of artists who engage(d) with Brecht from perspectives involving being a stranger, strangeness, or being estranged.

Published for the International Brecht Society by Camden House, the Brecht Yearbook is the central scholarly forum for discussion of Brecht's life and work and of topics of particular interest to him, especially the politics of literature and of theater in a global context. It includes a wide variety of perspectives and approaches and, like Brecht himself, is committed to the use value of literature, theater, and theory.

Volume 45 is the first of two volumes dedicated to the proceedings of the 16th Symposium of the IBS, "Brecht Among Strangers," held at Leipzig University in 2019. It features three sections: "Among Strangers–Brecht's Figures of Strangeness," "From East to West and Vice Versa–Geographic Interconnections," and "Global Estrangements–Brecht in the Age of Globalization." The articles cover a wide range of artists who engage(d) with Brecht and his work from such thematic perspectives — including Benno Besson, Arvind Gaur, Meng Jinghui, Mei Lan-fang, Peter Lorre, Koreya Senda, SIGNA, Konrad Swinarski, and Sergei Tretyakov — and link them to questions of alterity, dramaturgy, Gestus/gestures, pedagogy, realism, and singularity. The contributors include Gerda Baumbach, Aurélien Bellucci, Veronika Darian, Rico Dietzmeyer, Helen Fehervary, Zbigniew Feliszewski, Francesco Fiorentino, Anna Häusler, Günther Heeg, Eiichiro Hirata, Torben Ibs, Anja Klöck, Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Astrid Oesmann, Patrick Primavesi, Tanja Prokic, Christoph Püngel, Kevin Rittberger, Sergei Romashko, Franziska Schubert, Melanie Selfe, Leonie Sowa, Kai Tuchmann, Lydia White, Noah Willumsen, and others.

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 45

Helena Ragg-Kirby

Adalbert Stifter's Late Prose

$110.00

Provides a view of the late Stifter as a forerunner of twentieth-century modernism.

Adalbert Stifter has always been viewed as a natural heir to the Great Classical tradition, even by those critics who detect disturbing subtexts in his fiction. But he should be viewed quite differently: however well disguised, heis in truth a closet modernist, and a major trailblazer for Kafka and the Absurd.
This is most evident in his late fiction, which has been almost universally ignored, dismissed or disparaged by his critics. His last novel Witiko in particular has been conspicuously neglected by both nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics. Ragg-Kirkby demonstrates -- largely by way of close reading -- that this is Stifter's extreme masterpiece. Beneath the surface of Biedermeier stuffiness is a vision of fracture, emptiness, meaninglessness, and mania not only more radical than that of any other 19th-century author, but arguably more radical than that of any 20th-century author, precisely because there is such a disjuncture between text and sub-text. In his final novel, Stifter simply leaves the future behind.

Helena Ragg-Kirkby is a lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield.

Theodore F. Rippey

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 38

$80.00

Bertolt Brecht continues to be regarded as one of the twentieth century's most controversial and influential writers. His life and work raise important questions about the nature and function of literature and theater, about perception and commitment, about feminist approaches to politics and literature, and about intellectual property rights. The Brecht Yearbook is a venue for discussion about aspects of theater and literature that were of particular interest to Brecht, especially the politics of literature and the politics of theater in a global context. This volume features a dossier on writer-actor-director Manfred Karge, unpublished documents from Brecht's life in Augsburg, new research articles on Brecht, and reviews of recent books. Article topics include Brecht and Adorno in Los Angeles, Brecht and Wagner at the Kroll Opera, Brecht and Abstraction, and transcultural aspects of epic theater.