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There are many stories featuring the villainous hero Reynard the Fox in many languages told over many centuries, goingback as far as the early 12th century. All these stories are comic and much of the humour depends on parody and satire resulting in mockery, sometimes the subversion of certain kinds of serious literature, of political and religious institutions and practices, of scholarly argument and moralizing, and of popular beliefs and customs. The contributors to this volume, all of them experts in one or more of the Reynard stories and their backgrounds, focus on the transformation of these tales through various media and to what extent they reflect differences in the cultural, class, and generational background of their tellers.
This book is a study of central aspects of Weimar Classicism, written in the light of Ernst Cassirer's cultural theory. It provides a close reading of key texts, ranging across Goethe and Schiller's oeuvre as a whole, from their (philosophical) poems through their drama, prose-writing, and theoretical reflections on cultural and scientific topics. The work seeks to demonstrate the attested (but hitherto largely unanalysed) aesthetic power at the very heart of their writings, which in turn underpins their epistemological and ethical significance. The main theme of Weimar Classicism is the role of symbolism in Classicism, as distinct from the centrality of semiosis in competing cultural norms. The overall aim of the book is thus to see Weimar Classicism anew, both historically and analytically, as an enlightening context in which to reconsider many of the central tenets of contemporary (often called 'postmodern') cultural theory.
Stefan Heym's very beginnings as a writer were a direct response to the threat of Fascism and the mass veneration of Hitler, and in his American exile he was to encounter the marketing and image machinery of capitalism and democratic politics. After arriving in the GDR in the wake of McCarthyism he was then confronted with the Stalin cult and the stark contradiction between the personality cult and the purported aims of the Communist vision. This book examines Heym's response to a problem that did not die out with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and which he treated as a universal phenomenon, and probes the extent to which he employed various publicity techniques to shape his own reception as a writer. In this analysis of an often controversial figure, the author draws on much uncovered archive material, and places close readings in a broad context; this is one of few studies that deal with Heym's career as a whole, from his beginnings in the Weimar Republic and Czechoslovakia and his overnight success in America through to his eminence as an intellectual public figure in the GDR and the reunified Germany.
The call by German Early Romantic writers for a new mythology is one of the boldest and most unusual demands by any literary theorist. This study asks how an age which variously saw mythology as a historical phenomenon or a collection of artistically useful images came to see the need for its renewal at all. The author traces the evolving role of mythology in the writings of Winckelmann, Herder, Moritz and Schiller and argues that the late eighteenth century saw the emergence of a new conception of mythology which depended less on an established iconography and cultural context and more on the poetic and linguistic functions of mythology. This dehistoricized view of mythology formed the basis of the Romantic project and the author examines the works of Friedrich Schlegel and Schelling as well as the Älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus against that background.
In this broad-ranging study of German fiction by women between 1770-1914, the author aims to add a new dimension to existing debates on the association of women and illness in literature. She constructs a history of women's self-starvation, eating behaviour and wasting diseases.
This volume brings together a collection of essays focusing on selected aspects of inter- and multidisciplinarity in contemporary Austrian culture. These include the connections between literature and the media, literature and the visual arts, literature and travel, and the visual arts and public space. The individual contributions deal with central figures in the Austrian arts, including Thomas Bernhard, Franzobel, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Handke, Peter Turrini and Doron Rabinovici, as well as collective ventures such as Walter Grond's Odysseus project and the museum in progress. They analyse the impact of connections between disciplines on the cultural landscape in contemporary Austria, as well as examining the limits of such interaction between disciplines.
Although he is not always recognized as such, Soren Kierkegaard has been an important ally for Catholic theologians in the early twentieth century. Moreover, understanding this relationship and its origins offers valuable resources and insights to contemporary Catholic theology. Of course, there are some negative preconceptions to overcome. Historically, some Catholic readers have been suspicious of Kierkegaard, viewing him as an irrational Protestant irreconcilably at odds with Catholic thought. Nevertheless, the favorable mention of Kierkegaard in John Paul II's Fides et Ratio is an indication that Kierkegaard's writings are not so easily dismissed. Catholic Theology after Kierkegaard inve...
The German Revolution of 1848-49 offered a significant literary opportunity for all those interested in politics in general and the progress of women in society in particular. This book explores the work of a number of women who took up the challenge of breaking into the decidedly male preserve of political writing in this period. The focus is on women with very different concerns: Malwida von Meysenbug, the aristocrat who supported the democratic cause, the assimilated Jew Fanny Lewald; the housewife, musician, composer and teacher Johanna Kinkel; and the radical feminist Louise Aston. The work examines the strategies these women employed to negotiate potentially explosive issues such as the politics of the day, class, religion and gender, as well as the way traditional images like the father-child relationship are exploited to express new thoughts. Using a combination of close textual reading and thematically based analysis the book illuminates the authors' individual works and explores underlying issues that are common to all.
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