You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Teaching a foreign language and culture is always a challenge, but it has been especially problematic to teach the German language and culture in the United States in the twentieth century. The tradition of Germany's great poets and thinkers of the past has been joined by a starker legacy. Through explorations of such topics as the world wars, the Holocaust, women in the language-teaching profession, Jewish contributions, and technology's impact on scholarship, this volume inspects the fascination and frustrating relationships of the two cultures as they interact through the teaching of German in American educational systems--from small liberal arts colleges to large and famous universities. This volume resulted from a conference, "Shaping Forces in American Germanics," held in Madison, Wisconsin in September 1996.
I wish to express my gratitude to the following distinguished scholars who have been greatly instrumental in the result of this inquiry. I am most indebted to Professor Peter Gay of Columbia, who has weeded out many errors and ambiguities in the manuscript, and whose vast knowledge, wide interest and profound insights have helped me here, as on previous occasions, to understand the intricacies of the eighteenth century. I should also like to thank Professor Fritz Stern for the keen criticism with which he has read the entire manuscript. A special debt lowe to Dr. Walter Silz who, expert on Schiller as well as on the Romantics, has aided me with great skill, experience and wisdom in the probl...
The Mysterious Barricades criticizes the misconceptions of post-structuralism and then moves on to the reclamation of criticism as a philosophical activity concerned with how words work.
The theme of divine judgement has often been treated, but usually with a concentration on one it its two main aspects: either that which is seen in the present life and in history or that which is believed to occur only after death. This new study seeks to combine the two aspects. It also tries to cover the whole spectrum of the ancient religions. Special attention is given to Israel, Greece, and Egypt. Israel's neighbours are also considered, and there are discussions of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. In several areas, notably in Egypt and Israel, it is shown that punishment in this life is sometimes presented as a fate that man brings upon himself rather than as one imposed by God, though always against a moral background derived from religion. The origins of judgement after death in the Judaeo-Christian tradition are examined in some detail and elements are traced to Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Judaic sources.
A look at neglected aspects of the early career of one of the premier poets of the German language.
The Emergence of Neuroscience and the German Novel: Poetics of the Brain revises the dominant narrative about the distinctive psychological inwardness and introspective depth of the German novel by reinterpreting the novel’s development from the perspective of the nascent discipline of neuroscience, the emergence of which is coterminous with the rise of the novel form. In particular, it asks how the novel’s formal properties—stylistic, narrative, rhetorical, and figurative—correlate with the formation of a neuroscientific discourse, and how the former may have assisted, disrupted, and/or intensified the medical articulation of neurological concepts. This study poses the question: how does this rapidly evolving field emerge in the context of nineteenth century cultural practices and what were the conditions for its emergence in the German-speaking world specifically? Where did neuroscience begin and how did it broaden in scope? And most crucially, to what degree does it owe its existence to literature?
Hrotsvit wrote stories, plays, and histories during the reign of Emperor Otto the Great (962-973). 12 original essays survey her work, showing historical roots and contexts, Christian values, and a surprisingly modern grappling with questions of identity and female self-realization.
Literary satire assumes three main forms: monologue, parody, and narrative (some fictional, some dramatic). This book by Gilbert Highet is a study of these forms, their meaning, their variation, their powers. Its scope is the range of satirical literature—from ancient Greece to modern America, from Aristophanes to Ionesco, from the parodists of Homer to the parodists of Eisenhower. It shows how satire originated in Greece and Rome, what its initial purposes and methods were, and how it revived in the Renaissance, to continue into our own era. Contents: Preface. I. Introduction. II. Diatribe. III. Parody. IV. The Distorting Mirror. V. Conclusion. Notes. Brief Bibliography. Index. Originally...
Although primarily known as an eminent historian of Russia, Nicholas Riasanovsky has been a longtime student of European Romanticism. In this book, Riasanovsky offers a refreshing and appealing new interpretation of Romanticism's goals and influence. He searches for the origins of the dazzling vision that made the great early Romantic poets in England and Germany--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Novalis, and Friedrich Schlegel--look at the world in a new way. He stresses that Romanticism was produced only by Western Christian civilization, with its unique view of humankind's relationship to God. The Romantic's frantic and heroic striving after unreachable goals mirrors Christian beliefs in human inability to adequately address God, speak to God, or praise God. Further, Riasanovsky argues that Romantic thought had important political implications, playing a key role in the rise of nationalism in Europe. Offering a historical examination of an area often limited to literary analysis, this book gracefully makes a larger historical statement about the nature and centrality of European Romanticism.
In this study of the imaginary universe of Germany's most famous author of fantasy, Kenneth Negus attempts to establish the coherency and fathom the depth of the "other world" manifested in Hoffmann's many tales. Proceeding mainly from Der Goldene Topf, Hoffmann's most fully developed mystical work, Negus shows how the figures, themes, and motifs Hoffmann established permeate his tales, forming a basic overall structure that embodies creation, destruction, and the interaction of the two extremes in a mythology that is a fantastic distillation of the real world with which it is often in conflict. This close and careful scrutiny of the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann should be of major interest to all teachers and students of German and Comparative Literature.