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Includes selections from Krauss's The Last Days of Mankind and Aphorisms, Bloch's The Anarchist, Canetti's Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fe, and Walser's Jakob von Gunten .
Based on the premise that a society’s sense of commonality depends upon media practices, this study examines how Hollywood responded to the crisis of democracy during the Second World War by creating a new genre - the war film. Developing an affective theory of genre cinema, the study’s focus on the sense of commonality offers a new characterization of the relationship between politics and poetics. It shows how the diverse ramifications of genre poetics can be explored as a network of experiental modalities that make history graspable as a continuous process of delineating the limits of community.
During the late Middle Ages, a considerable number of men in Germany and Switzerland were executed for committing sodomy. Even in the seventeenth century, simply speaking of the act was cause for censorship. Here, in the first history of sodomy in these countries, Helmut Puff argues that accusations of sodomy during this era were actually crucial to the success of the Protestant Reformation. Drawing on both literary and historical evidence, Puff shows that speakers of German associated sodomy with Italy and, increasingly, Catholicism. As the Reformation gained momentum, the formerly unspeakable crime of sodomy gained a voice, as Martin Luther and others deployed accusations of sodomy to discredit the upper ranks of the Church and to create a sense of community among Protestant believers. During the sixteenth century, reactions against this defamatory rhetoric, and fear that mere mention of sodomy would incite sinful acts, combined to repress even court cases of sodomy. Written with precision and meticulously researched, this revealing study will interest historians of gender, sexuality, and religion, as well as scholars of medieval and early modern history and culture.
Includes international essays on possibly the most important aspect of the aesthetics and narratives of comics - urban topography and environment.
This book is the first attempt to present a comprehensive picture of LGBT culture in the two German states in the 1970s. Starting from the common view of the decade between the moderation of the German anti-sodomy law in 1968 (East) and 1969 (West) and the first documented case of AIDS (1982) as a ‘golden age’ for queer politics and culture, this edited collection traces the way this impression has been shaped by cultural production. The chapters ask: What exactly made the 1970s a 'legendary decade'? What was its revolutionary potential and what were its path-breaking political and aesthetic strategies? Which elements, movements and memories had to be marginalized in order to facilitate the historical construction of the 'legendary decade'? Exploring the complex picture of gay, lesbian and – to a lesser extent – trans cultures from this time, the volume provides fascinating insights into both canonized and marginalized texts and films from and about the decade.
Distinguishing the graphic novel from other types of comic books has presented problems due to the fuzziness of category boundaries. Against the backdrop of prototype theory, the author establishes the graphic novel as a genre whose core feature is complexity, which again is defined by seven gradable subcategories: 1) multilayered plot and narration, 2) multireferential use of color, 3) complex text-image relation, 4) meaning-enhancing panel design and layout, 5) structural performativity, 6) references to texts/media, and 7) self-referential and metafictional devices. Regarding the subcategory of narration, the existence of a narrator as known from classical narratology can no longer be ass...
Aesthetics of Absence presents a significant challenge to the many embedded assumptions and hierarchical structures that have become ‘naturalised’ in western theatre production. This is the first English translation of a new collection of writings and lectures by Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German theatre director, composer and teacher. These writings map Goebbels’ engagement with ‘Aesthetics of Absence’ through his own experience at the forefront of innovative music-theatre and performance making. In this volume, Goebbels reflects on works created over a period of more than 20 years staged throughout the world; introduces some of his key artistic influences, including Robert Wil...
Fact and Fiction explores the intersection between literature and the sciences, focusing on German and British culture between the eighteenth century and today. Observing that it was in the eighteenth century that the divide between science and literature as disciplines first began to be defined, the contributors to this collection probe how authors from that time onwards have assessed and affected the relationship between literary and scientific cultures. Fact and Fiction's twelve essays cover a wide range of scientific disciplines, from physics and chemistry to medicine and anthropology, and a variety of literary texts, such as Erasmus Darwin's poem The Botanic Garden, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, and Goethe's Elective Affinities. The collection will appeal to scholars of literature and of the history of science, and to those interested in the connections between the two.
This book aims to enhance our appreciation of the modernity of the classical cultures and, conversely, of cinema's debt to ancient Greece and Rome. It explores filmic perspectives on the ancient verbal and visual arts and applies what is often referred to as pre-cinema and what Sergei Eisenstein called cinematism: that paintings, statues, and literature anticipate modern visual technologies. The motion of bodies depicted in static arts and the vividness of epic ecphrases point to modern features of storytelling, while Plato's Cave Allegory and Zeno's Arrow Paradox have been related to film exhibition and projection since the early days of cinema. The book additionally demonstrates the extensive influence of antiquity on an age dominated by moving-image media, as with stagings of Odysseus' arrow shot through twelve axes or depictions of the Golden Fleece. Chapters interpret numerous European and American silent and sound films and some television productions and digital videos.
Arguing for the necessity of taking art's contribution to contemporary realism seriously, this edited collection intervenes on contemporary debates about realism by demonstrating that the arts do not simply illustrate philosophical theories. The significance of art's realism in times characterised by the normalisation of fake, manipulated and distorted representations of reality can only be fully understood by attending to the ways that the arts mediate, visualise and even shape reality. Each chapter features a different approach to realism and its aesthetic dimensions not only in the visual arts, but also in sound art, film, scientific imaging and literature.