German Literature Of The Nineteenth Century 1832 1899

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German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899

Author : Clayton Koelb
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 9781571132505
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (325 download)

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Book Synopsis German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899 by : Clayton Koelb

Download or read book German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899 written by Clayton Koelb and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays providing an overview of the major movements, genres, and authors of 19th-century German literature in social and political context. This volume provides an overview of the major movements, genres, and authors of 19th-century German literature in the period from the death of Goethe in 1832 to the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. Although the primary focus is on imaginative literature and its genres, there is also substantial discussion of related topics, including music-drama, philosophy, and the social sciences. Literature is considered in its cultural and socio-political context, and the German literary scene takes its place in a wider European perspective. Following the editors' introduction, essays consider the impact of Romanticism on subsequent literary movements, the effectsof major movements and writers of non-German-speaking Europe on the development of German literature, and the impact of politics on the changing cultural scene. The second section presents overviews of the principal movements ofthe time (Junges Deutschland, Vormärz, Biedermeier, Poetic Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism, and Impressionism), and the third section focuses on the major genres of lyric poetry, prose fiction, drama, and music-drama. The final section provides bibliographical resources in the form of a critical bibliography and a list of primary sources. Contributors to the volume are distinguished scholars of German literature, culture, and history from North America andEurope: Andrew Webber, Lilian Furst, Arne Koch, Robert Holub, Gail Finney, Ernst Grabovszki, Benjamin Bennett, Jeffrey Sammons, Thomas Pfau, Christopher Morris, John Pizer, Thomas Spencer. Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Distinguished Professor of German at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Eric Downing is Associate Professor of German at the same institution.

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Author : John Breuilly
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474269494
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Nineteenth-Century Germany by : John Breuilly

Download or read book Nineteenth-Century Germany written by John Breuilly and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Breuilly brings together a distinguished group of international scholars to examine Germany's history from 1780 to 1918, featuring chapters on economic, demographic and social as well as cultural and intellectual history. There are also chapters on political and military history covering the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the post-Napoleonic period, the revolutions of 1848-1849, the unification of Germany, Bismarckian Germany and Wilhelmine Germany, and Germany during the First World War. This new edition, which retains the helpful further reading suggestions for each chapter and a chronology, has been completely updated to take account of recent historiography. The statistical data has been expanded, more maps and images have been introduced, and there are two new chapters on transnational approaches and gender history. Finally, the editor has added a conclusion which reflects on the key developments in the history of Germany over the “long nineteenth century”. Providing clear surveys of the central events and developments and addressing major debates amongst historians, Nineteenth-Century Germany is vital reading for all those wishing to understand this crucial period in modern German history.

German Literature of the High Middle Ages

Author : Will Hasty
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1571131736
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis German Literature of the High Middle Ages by : Will Hasty

Download or read book German Literature of the High Middle Ages written by Will Hasty and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2006 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays on the first flowering of German literature, in the High Middle Ages and especially during the period 1180-1230.

The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century

Author : Charlotte Woodford
Publisher : Camden House
ISBN 13 : 1571134875
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century by : Charlotte Woodford

Download or read book The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century written by Charlotte Woodford and published by Camden House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A much-needed look at the fiction that was actually read by masses of Germans in the late nineteenth century, and the conditions of its publication and reception. The late nineteenth century was a crucial period for the development of German fiction. Political unification and industrialization were accompanied by the rise of a mass market for German literature, and with it the beginnings ofthe German bestseller.Offering escape, romance, or adventure, as well as insights into the modern world, nineteenth-century bestsellers often captured the imagination of readers well into the twentieth century and beyond. However, many have been neglected by scholars. This volume offers new readings of literary realism by focusing not on the accepted intellectual canon but on commercially successful fiction in its material and social contexts. It investigates bestsellers from writers such as Freytag, Dahn, Jensen, Raabe, Viebig, Stifter, Auerbach, Storm, Möllhausen, Marlitt, Suttner, and Thomas Mann. The contributions examine the aesthetic strategies that made the works sucha success, and writers' attempts to appeal simultaneously on different levels to different readers. Bestselling writers often sought to accommodate the expectations of publishers and the marketplace, while preserving some sense ofartistic integrity. This volume sheds light on the important effect of the mass market on the writing not just of popular works, but of German prose fiction on all levels. Contributors: Christiane Arndt, Caroline Bland, Elizabeth Boa, Anita Bunyan, Katrin Kohl, Todd Kontje, Peter C. Pfeiffer, Nicholas Saul, Benedict Schofield, Ernest Schonfield, Martin Swales, Charlotte Woodford. Charlotte Woodford is Lecturer in German and Directorof Studies in Modern Languages at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Benedict Schofield is Senior Lecturer in German and Head of the Department of German at King's College London.

German Literature of the Eighteenth Century

Author : Barbara Becker-Cantarino
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1571132465
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis German Literature of the Eighteenth Century by : Barbara Becker-Cantarino

Download or read book German Literature of the Eighteenth Century written by Barbara Becker-Cantarino and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2005 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment was based on the use of reason, common sense, and "natural law," and was paralleled by an emphasis on feelings and the emotions in religious, especially Pietist circles. Progressive thinkers in England, France, and later in Germany began to assail the absolutism of the state and the orthodoxy of the Church; in Germany the line led from Leibniz, Thomasius, and Wolff to Lessing and Kant, and eventually to the rise of an educated upper middle class. Literary developments encompassed the emergence of a national theater, literature, and a common literary language. This became possible in part because of advances in literacy and education, especially among bourgeois women, and the reorganization of book production and the book market. This major new reference work provides a fresh look at the major literary figures, works, and cultural developments from around 1700 up to the late Enlightenment. They trace the 18th-century literary revival in German-speaking countries: from occasional and learned literature under the influence of French Neoclassicism to the establishment of a new German drama, religious epic and secular poetry, and the sentimentalist novel of self-fashioning. The volume includes the new, stimulating works of women, a chapter on music and literature, chapters on literary developments in Switzerland and in Austria, and a chapter on reactions to the Enlightenment from the 19th century to the present. The recent revaluing of cultural and social phenomena affecting literary texts informs the presentations in the individual chapters and allows for the inclusion of hitherto neglected but important texts such as essays, travelogues, philosophical texts, and letters. Contributors: Kai Hammermeister, Katherine Goodman, Helga Brandes, Rosmarie Zeller, Kevin Hilliard, Francis Lamport, Sarah Colvin, Anna Richards, Franz M. Eybl, W. Daniel Wilson, Robert Holub. Barbara Becker-Cantarino is Research Professor in German at the Ohio State University.

The Literature of Weimar Classicism

Author : Simon Richter
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 157113249X
Total Pages : 421 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis The Literature of Weimar Classicism by : Simon Richter

Download or read book The Literature of Weimar Classicism written by Simon Richter and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2005 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays providing an account of the shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values of Weimar Classicism.

Kuno Francke's Edition of the German Classics (1913-15)

Author : Jeffrey L. Sammons
Publisher : Peter Lang
ISBN 13 : 9781433106774
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis Kuno Francke's Edition of the German Classics (1913-15) by : Jeffrey L. Sammons

Download or read book Kuno Francke's Edition of the German Classics (1913-15) written by Jeffrey L. Sammons and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-volume edition of The German Classics: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English was edited by Kuno Francke of Harvard (1855-1930), the most prestigious professor of German in America at the time. While it bears the imprint dates 1913 and 1914, it was not completed until mid-1915, just in time for the submarine sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania in May of that year. The edition was publicized with great fanfare and was well received at first, but with the outbreak of the European war in 1914 and the entry of the United States into it in 1917, American sentiment turned against all things German. The reviews became hostile; the edition was nearly pulped; its publisher went bankrupt; and Francke felt obliged to resign his Harvard professorship. Kuno Francke's Edition of The German Classics (1913-15) describes the origins of the edition; recounts the careers of the editors and some fifty professional contributors; seeks to identify approximately 115 translators; and comments on the nearly 500 illustrations, mostly German art of the nineteenth century. This book also introduces the selections from the 114 featured authors, almost a third of whom were still alive at the time of publication, and evaluates the critical commentary. The edition emerges from the study as a laboratory of the high prestige of German literature and culture in the United States before it fell into permanent decline at the time of World War I.

Imperial Germany 1871-1918

Author : James Retallack
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019160710X
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Imperial Germany 1871-1918 by : James Retallack

Download or read book Imperial Germany 1871-1918 written by James Retallack and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-04-10 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German Empire was founded in January 1871 not only on the basis of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's 'blood and iron' policy but also with the support of liberal nationalists. Under Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany became the dynamo of Europe. Its economic and military power were pre-eminent; its science and technology, education, and municipal administration were the envy of the world; and its avant-garde artists reflected the ferment in European culture. But Germany also played a decisive role in tipping Europe's fragile balance of power over the brink and into the cataclysm of the First World War, eventually leading to the empire's collapse in military defeat and revolution in November 1918. With contributions from an international team of twelve experts in the field, this volume offers an ideal introduction to this crucial era, taking care to situate Imperial Germany in the larger sweep of modern German history, without suggesting that Nazism or the Holocaust were inevitable endpoints to the developments charted here.

Transnational German Studies

Author : Rebecca Braun
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1789627311
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis Transnational German Studies by : Rebecca Braun

Download or read book Transnational German Studies written by Rebecca Braun and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of a series of essays, written by leading scholars within the field, demonstrating the types of inquiry that can be pursued into the transnational realities underpinning German-language culture and history as these travel right around the globe. Contributions discuss the inherent cross-pollination of different languages, times, places and notions of identity within German-language cultures and the ways in which their construction and circulation cannot be contained by national or linguistic borders. In doing so, it is not the aim of the volume to provide a compendium of existing transnational approaches to German Studies or to offer its readers a series of survey chapters on different fields of study to date. Instead, it offers novel research-led chapters that pose a question, a problem or an issue through which contemporary and historical transcultural and transnational processes can be seen at work. Accordingly, each essay isolates a specific area of study and opens it up for exploration, providing readers, especially student readers, not just with examples of transnational phenomena in German language cultures but also with models of how research in these areas can be configured and pursued. Contributors: Angus Nicholls, Anne Fuchs, Benedict Schofield, Birgit Lang, Charlotte Ryland, Claire Baldwin, Dirk Weissmann, Elizabeth Anderson, James Hodkinson, Nicholas Baer, Paulo Soethe, Rebecca Braun, Sara Jones, Sebastian Heiduschke, Stuart Taberner and Ulrike Draesner.

Metrical Claims and Poetic Experience

Author : Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192675311
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

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Book Synopsis Metrical Claims and Poetic Experience by : Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge

Download or read book Metrical Claims and Poetic Experience written by Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contributes to the fields of lyric poetry and poetics (especially poetic form), aesthetics, and German literature by intervening in debates on the social functions, cognitive and emotional effects, and the value of poetry. It builds on, and moves beyond, previous theories of rhythm to tie meter more particularly to the specificities of poetic language in blending of embodied responses, cultural situations, and linguistic particularities. The book examines the German-language tradition across three centuries, arguing that the interdisciplinarity and richness of metrical theory and practice emerge in the heterogeneity of poetry and its defenders in their specific historical moments. Focusing on Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Durs Grünbein, the book contextualizes each in the metrical and aesthetic debates of his epoch, showing how questions of meter are linked with overarching poetic goals such as the relationship between form and meaning, the adaptation of the Classical past for German literature, and the ways poetry's sounds work in the body. It argues that Klopstock's, Nietzsche's, and Grünbein's metrical theory and practice offer valuable insights for thinking about the ways poetry works and why it matters.

Effi Briest

Author : Theodor Fontane
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191663174
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Effi Briest by : Theodor Fontane

Download or read book Effi Briest written by Theodor Fontane and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I loathe what I did, but what I loathe even more is your virtue.' Seventeen-year-old Effi Briest is steered by her parents into marriage with an ambitious bureaucrat, twenty years her senior. He takes her from her home to a remote provincial town on the Baltic coast of Prussia where she is isolated, bored, and prey to superstitious fears. She drifts into a half-hearted affair with a manipulative, womanizing officer, which ends when her husband is transferred to Berlin. Years later, events are triggered that will have profound consequences for Effi and her family. Effi Briest (1895) is recognized as one of the masterpieces by Theodor Fontane, Germany's premier realist novelist, and one of the great novels of marital relations together with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. It presents life among the conservative Prussian aristocracy with irony and gentle humour, and opposes the rigid and antiquated morality of the time by treating its heroine with sympathy and keen psychological insight. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity

Author : Jonathan M. Hess
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804774234
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity by : Jonathan M. Hess

Download or read book Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity written by Jonathan M. Hess and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For generations of German-speaking Jews, the works of Goethe and Schiller epitomized the world of European high culture, a realm that Jews actively participated in as both readers and consumers. Yet from the 1830s on, Jews writing in German also produced a vast corpus of popular fiction that was explicitly Jewish in content, audience, and function. Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity offers the first comprehensive investigation in English of this literature, which sought to navigate between tradition and modernity, between Jewish history and the German present, and between the fading walls of the ghetto and the promise of a new identity as members of a German bourgeoisie. This study examines the ways in which popular fiction assumed an unprecedented role in shaping Jewish identity during this period. It locates in nineteenth-century Germany a defining moment of the modern Jewish experience and the beginnings of a tradition of Jewish belles lettres that is in many ways still with us today.

Franz Liszt’s Songs for Voice and Piano

Author : Małgorzata Gamrat
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004548866
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (45 download)

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Book Synopsis Franz Liszt’s Songs for Voice and Piano by : Małgorzata Gamrat

Download or read book Franz Liszt’s Songs for Voice and Piano written by Małgorzata Gamrat and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-27 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a Romantic composer approach the poetry he sets: as raw material to be remade, a pretext for self-expression, a sanctified artefact, or a message to be illustrated with music? In my book, I examine Franz Liszt’s songs for voice and piano, which remain little known to scholars, artists, and music lovers alike. The objective is to present Liszt’s songs in all their complexity and diversity as well as identifying the key elements of the composer’s broadly understood song-writing technique – both those that make him unique and those that relate him to the European tradition. This approach also makes it possible to shed light on a major though previously neglected aspect of the composer’s workshop, namely, his work with the poetic text, which to Liszt was just as important as the musical setting.

Commitment and Compassion

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9401208077
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Commitment and Compassion by :

Download or read book Commitment and Compassion written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writer, scientist, philosopher, and radical democrat Georg Büchner (1813-1837) occupies a unique place in the cultural legacy of the German-speaking countries. Born into an epoch of inevitable, yet arrested historical transition, Büchner produced a small but exceptionally rich body of work. This collection of essays in English and in German considers the full spectrum of his writings, the political pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote, the dramas Danton’s Tod, Leonce und Lena, Woyzeck, and the fragmentary narrative Lenz, as well as the letters, the philosophical lectures on Descartes and Spinoza, and the scientific texts. The essays examine connections between these works, study texts in detail, debate ways of editing them, and trace their reception in contemporary literature and film. The novel readings presented here not only celebrate Büchner on the eve of his bicentenary birthday but also insert this untimely figure into discussions of the revolution-restoration dynamic and realism in poetics and politics.

Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose

Author : Marie Kolkenbrock
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501330977
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose by : Marie Kolkenbrock

Download or read book Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose written by Marie Kolkenbrock and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the function of the invocation of destiny in the increasingly secularized era of turn-of-the-century Vienna? By exploring this question, Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler's Prose offers a new psycho-sociological perspective on the narrative works of Arthur Schnitzler. While Vienna 1900 as a site of crisis has been established in the scholarship, this book focuses on the presence of forces that deny the existence of said crisis and work to contain its subversive and critical potential. Stereotype and destiny emerge in Schnitzler's prose texts as a form of these counter-critical forces. In her readings, Kolkenbrock shows that stereotype and destiny serve as an interrelated coping mechanism for a central psychological conflict of modernity: the paradoxical need to be recognized as 'normal' and 'special' at the same time. While, through the complex of "stereotype and destiny," Schnitzler's prose addresses central modern questions of identity and subjecthood, Kolkenbrock's close readings also reveal how the texts inscribe themselves aesthetically in the literary tradition of Romanticism and as such offer crucial sources for understanding Schnitzler's representations of embattled subjecthood within broader social and aesthetic traditions.

The Princeton Handbook of World Poetries

Author : Roland Greene
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691170517
Total Pages : 717 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis The Princeton Handbook of World Poetries by : Roland Greene

Download or read book The Princeton Handbook of World Poetries written by Roland Greene and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative and comprehensive guide to poetry throughout the world The Princeton Handbook of World Poetries—drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics—provides a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the history and practice of poetry in more than 100 major regional, national, and diasporic literatures and language traditions around the globe. With more than 165 entries, the book combines broad overviews and focused accounts to give extensive coverage of poetic traditions throughout the world. For students, teachers, researchers, poets, and other readers, it supplies a one-of-a-kind resource, offering in-depth treatment of Indo-European poetries (all the major Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages, and others); ancient Middle Eastern poetries (Hebrew, Persian, Sumerian, and Assyro-Babylonian); subcontinental Indian poetries (Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu, and more); Asian and Pacific poetries (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Nepalese, Thai, and Tibetan); Spanish American poetries (those of Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and many other Latin American countries); indigenous American poetries (Guaraní, Inuit, and Navajo); and African poetries (those of Ethiopia, Somalia, South Africa, and other countries, and including African languages, English, French, and Portuguese). Complete with an introduction by the editors, this is an essential volume for anyone interested in understanding poetry in an international context. Drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Provides more than 165 authoritative entries on poetry in more than 100 regional, national, and diasporic literatures and language traditions throughout the world Features extensive coverage of non-Western poetic traditions Includes an introduction, bibliographies, cross-references, and a general index

The Chain of Things

Author : Eric Downing
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501715925
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chain of Things by : Eric Downing

Download or read book The Chain of Things written by Eric Downing and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Chain of Things, Eric Downing shows how the connection between divinatory magic and reading shaped the experience of reading and aesthetics among nineteenth-century realists and modernist thinkers. He explores how writers, artists, and critics such as Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin drew on the ancient practice of divination, connecting the Greek idea of sympathetic magic to the German aesthetic concept of the attunement of mood and atmosphere. Downing deftly traces the genealogical connection between reading and art in classical antiquity, nineteenth-century realism, and modernism, attending to the ways in which the modern re-enchantment of the world—both in nature and human society—consciously engaged ancient practices that aimed at preternatural prediction. Of particular significance to the argument presented in The Chain of Things is how the future figured into the reading of texts during this period, a time when the future as a narrative determinant or article of historical faith was losing its force. Elaborating a new theory of magic as a critical tool, Downing secures crucial links between the governing notions of time, world, the "real," and art.