Synopses & Reviews
The revolutionary spirit that animates the culture of the Germans has been alive for at least twelve centuries, far longer than the dramatically fragmented and reshaped political entity known as Germany. German culture has been central to Europe, and it has contributed the transforming spirit of Lutheran religion, the technology of printing as a medium of democracy, the soulfulness of Romantic philosophy, the structure of higher education, and the tradition of liberal socialism to the essential character of modern American life.
In this book leading scholars and critics capture the spirit of this culture in some 200 original essays on events in German literary history. Rather than offering a single continuous narrative, the entries focus on a particular literary work, an event in the life of an author, a historical moment, a piece of music, a technological invention, even a theatrical or cinematic premiere. Together they give the reader a surprisingly unified sense of what it is that has allowed Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, Luther, Kant, Goethe, Beethoven, Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Jelinek, and Sebald to provoke and enchant their readers. From the earliest magical charms and mythical sagas to the brilliance and desolation of 20th-century fiction, poetry, and film, this illuminating reference book invites readers to experience the full range of German literary culture and to investigate for themselves its disparate and unifying themes.
Contributors include: Amy M. Hollywood on medieval women mystics, Jan-Dirk Müller on Gutenberg, Marion Aptroot on the Yiddish Renaissance, Emery Snyder on the Baroque novel, J. B. Schneewind on Natural Law, Maria Tatar on the Grimm brothers, Arthur Danto on Hegel, Reinhold Brinkmann on Schubert, Anthony Grafton on Burckhardt, Stanley Corngold on Freud, Andreas Huyssen on Rilke, Greil Marcus on Dada, Eric Rentschler on Nazi cinema, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl on Hannah Arendt, Gordon A. Craig on Günter Grass, Edward Dimendberg on Holocaust memorials.
Review
Monumental...The book is a treat, arranged chronologically and vigorously cross-referenced, allowing the intrepid to jump among Thomas Bernhard's rejection of an inherited past, vegetarian utopias, Wilhelm Busch's comic precursors, 'rubble literature,' the rather emo reception of The Sorrows of Young Werther, Elfriede Jelinek, and The Easter Play of Muri. Mark M. Anderson - Bookforum
Review
A New History of German Literature actually delivers far more than its title suggests. It consists of some 200 short essays by an international team of contributors, including not only literary but also political and social historians, critics of art, music, and film, philosophers, theologians, and many others. Each essay takes a significant date in the last thirteen centuries--publications, conjunctions, revolutions, catastrophes--and offers an exegesis that illuminates a major figure or phenomenon. The result adds up to a series of dazzling glimpses of transcendence, a sequence of microcosms, tantalizingly brief but almost always to the point. It is a monument to American scholarship. No review could do justice to the richness of this encyclopedic work, which is presumably not intended to be read from beginning to end, but to be dipped into and sampled at leisure...This book is a veritable banquet...By insisting that each essay be highly selective, capturing only the essential physiognomy of its subject with minimal biographical or critical ballast, the editors have accomplished the seemingly impossible: to make a book of a thousand pages seem effortlessly concise...[A] celestial feast of the mind...The moment has surely come for European intellectuals to set about reviving European culture before it is too late. Europeans need books like A New History of German Literature to remind us of what we have already lost, and Americans need them as an example of what can and must still be preserved. Library Journal
Review
The essays making up this new history of the literary and philosophical culture of the people of the German lands (and of Germans abroad) are of an unfailingly high standard. Many are noteworthy contributions to scholarship and criticism. The ingenious plan of the book permits a variety of style and approach, while strong editing has resulted in exemplary clarity and pithiness of expression. Well conceived, eclectic, lively, and informative, this New History gives us a model overview of what German literature and thought looks like from the twenty-first century. J M Coetzee, author of < i=""> Elizabeth Costello <> and < i=""> Doubling the Point <>
Review
A New History of German Literature is large: In just over a thousand pages it winds its way over a thousand years of history, across different genres, disciplines, and cultures, from the tenth-century magical formulas written in alliterative Old High German to W. G. Sebald's 2001 novel Austerlitz...[A] stunning intellectual achievement...One can only wish that its absorbingly fresh account of literature and the interpreting process--'here and now,' as Wellbery puts it with infectious enthusiasm in his essay on Goethe's Faust--will reach the broadest possible audience. Daniel Johnson - New Criterion
Review
The table of contents reveals about 250 short chapters, each located in a specific year. This was done to facilitate what Walter Benjamin described as a 'tiger's leap into the past,' in which the singularity of a literary event is decisive while what is typical is left to one side. The consequence is the fracturing of the received canon into a kaleidoscope of magical moments...As an editorial achievement, this volume sets uniformly high and innovative standards. William Waters - Literary Imagination
Review
Harvard's New History of German Literature is an encyclopedic browser of incomparable quality for Germanophiles and Germanophobes alike. In a series of brief, penetrating essays, it retells thirteen centuries of German history through a broad spectrum of literature by both obscure and famous authors. For modern readers ready to tackle the riddle of modern Germany with real hope of solving it, here is the guide. Steven Ozment, author of < i=""> A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People <> and < i=""> The B & uuml;rgermeister ' s Daughter <>
Review
How German is German literature? The New History gives us a fresh and unconventional picture of the main figures and movements of a literature which remained in the church and cloister longer than Italian, French, and English literature, and became revolutionary in the middle of the 18th century. It is very encouraging that in a period of isolationism of culture and society such an ambitious project is possible. Michael Kr & uuml;ger, author of < i=""> The Cello Player <>
Review
This attractive thousand-page volume serves up 1300 years of German literary history like tapas. A New History of German Literature makes for compulsive browsing, and it will entertain and engage readers from a wide array of backgrounds. All quotations from German are accompanied by translations. Each entry comes with a short bibliography listing primary texts, published English translations of the primary texts, and a few choice items of scholarship...The book is comprehensively indexed. All in all, it's an instructive and delightful feast. T. J. Reed - Times Literary Supplement
Review
An enticing and authoritative review of German literature from its most splendid high points to a most horrible nadir and its aftermath. This book well documents how -- in a remarkable post-war process of moral regeneration -- German literature struggles to come to terms with what happened. Amos Elon, author of < i=""> The Pity of It All <>
Review
This New History of German Literature is simply the best overview of the subject available to the English-speaking reader. Selecting as its stepping-stones not a canon of biographies or a mere literary chronology but key dates chosen with intelligence and originality, it covers a dozen centuries of writings in German, from some of the earliest babblings in the language (the charms of Fulda) to the last accomplished works of a modern classic (W. G. Sebald). Erudite, quirky, vastly informative and hugely entertaining, it makes one wish for a bevy of forthcoming companion volumes. Alberto Manguel, author of < i=""> Stevenson under the Palm Trees <>
Review
The range spanned by the essays included in this volume is unusual, both in mere chronological terms and thanks to the diversity of approaches chosen by the authors; the best of scholarship has been made easily accessible even to the non-specialized reader by the contributors themselves and the highly innovative presentation of their texts. This volume is a brilliant achievement. Saul Friedlander, author of < i=""> Nazi Germany and the Jews <> and < i=""> Probing the Limits of Representation <>
Review
What is truly extraordinary about this collection of 200 essays is that it succeeds masterfully in distilling the essence of the German literary and intellectual legacy, spanning well over 800 years. Each only several pages long, the essays limn not just the great names, such as Hegel, Kant, Goethe, Beethoven, Freud, and many more but also literary works, themes, historical moments, pieces of music, etc. Leading specialists, scholars, and critics offer a wide variety of contributions covering, from the 13th century onward, such varied topics as early German sagas, Nazi cinema, theatrical premiers, and the Yiddish Renaissance. The coverage actually stretches all the way to the 21st century with a single piece, an essay about W. G. Sebald, who died in 2001. Ali Houissa
Review
Compelling reading...[A] most impressive volume. Brandon Stosuy - Voice Literary Supplement
Review
[A New History of German Literature] carries a powerful charge of enthusiasm, even of proselytizing commitment to the things it presents...In arguing for German literature vis-
Synopsis
From the earliest magical charms and mythical sagas to the brilliance and desolation of 20th-century fiction, poetry, and film, this illuminating reference book invites readers to experience the full range of German literary culture and to investigate for themselves its disparate and unifying themes.
About the Author
David E. Wellberyis LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor, <>University of Chicago.Judith Ryanis the Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature at <>Harvard University.Hans Ulrich Gumbrechtis Albert Guérard Professor of Literature at <>Stanford University.Anton Kaesis Chancellor Professor of German and Film Studies at the <>University of California at Berkeley.Dorothea von Mueckeis Professor of German Literature at <>Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Introduction
David E. Wellbery 744
The Charm of Charms
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Circa 800
The Carolingian Renaissance
Karl Maurer
Circa 830
Heroic or Vernacular Poetry?
Theodore M. Andersson
847, October
A Vernacular Gospel Harmony
Wolfgang Haubrichs
930
Old Norse Literature
Carol J. Clover
1027, August
Monastic Scriptoria
Stephan Müller
1074-1119
The Mystical Exposition of a City
Anselm Haverkamp
1147
A Cosmological Vision
Amy M. Hollywood
1150
Anthropology of the Crusades
Udo Friedrich
1157, March 22-31
Imperial Spin Control
Sean Ward
Circa 1170
Phantom Ladies
Eckehard Simon
1172, January
Religious Devotion and Courtly Display
Dieter Kartschoke
Circa 1175-1195
The Archpoet and Goliard Poetry
Sean Ward
1177-1197
A Satire of Courtly Literature
Helmut Puff
1184, Whitsuntide
The Courtly Festival
Horst Wenzel
1189
Hartmann's Poetry
Thomas Bein
Circa 1200
Contagious Violence
Jan-Dirk Müller
Post 1200
A Literary Language?
Orrin W. Robinson
1203, Summer
Salvation through Fiction
James A. Schultz
1203, November 12
Singer of Himself
Peter Gilgen
Circa 1210
Love Exalted
C. Stephen Jaeger
Circa 1230
The Dual Economy of Medieval Life
Peter Strohschneider
1250
World History as Legitimation
Gert Melville
Circa 1260
Spiritual Drama in an Urban Setting
Johannes Janota
Circa 1265
A Vision of Flowing Light
Amy M. Hollywood
1275, January 16
Truth and Fiction
Thomas Bein
1300
Poetry, Teaching, and Experience
Max Grosse
1329, March 27
Mysticism and Scholastic Theology
Rochelle Tobias
1346
Acknowledging the Divine
Niklaus Largier
1354
The Emperor and the Poet
Jeffrey T. Schnapp
1382
The Emergence of Yiddish Literature
Marion Aptroot
Circa 1400
The Culture of the Book
Tracy Adams and Stephen G. Nichols
Circa 1401
A Dialogue with Death
Christian Kiening
1437
The Beginning of Modern Thinking
Joachim Küpper
1442, May
Poetic Transformations of the Self
Wernfried Hofmeister
Circa 1450
Fastnachtsspiele
Eckehard Simon
1457
An Information Revolution
Jan-Dirk Müller
1478
Fortunatus Maps the World and Himself
Debra Prager
1492, November 7
The Ship of Fools
Helmut Puff
1500
A Philosophical Rascal?
Paul Oppenheimer
1500
A New Science of Beauty
Doris Mc Gonagill
1515, Ash Wednesday
A Cobbler-Poet Becomes a Master Author
Marisa Galvez
1515-1517
The Mysteries of the Kabbalah and the Theology of Obscure Men
Anthony Grafton
1522
Martin Luther and the Whole Man
Lisa Freinkel
1523
Luther's Bible and the Emergence of Standard German
Orrin W. Robinson
1537
The Image of the Word
Joseph Leo Koerner
1551
Make Poetry, Not War
Jan Ziolkowski
1557
A German Mamluk in Colonial Brazil?
Luciana Villas Bôas
1570
Ethical Utopianism and Stylistic Excess
Niklaus Largierand Karen Feldman
1594
Highlight of the Yiddish Renaissance
Marion Aptroot
1596, December 18
To Explore the Secrets of Heaven and Earth
Dorothea E. von Mücke
1600
Signatures of Divinity
Michel Chaouli
1609
Jesuit Theater and the Blindness of Self-Knowledge
Christopher J. Wild
1622-1624
Conversation, Poetic Form, and the State
Rüdiger Campe
1638
Sense and Intellect
Richard E. Schade
1647
The Dramaturgy of Travel
Elio Brancaforte
1647
Anatomy and Theology, Vanity and Redemption
Christopher J. Wild
1657-1686
Poems as Way-Signs
Emery Snyder
1662
Learning and News in the Baroque
Emery Snyder
1666, February
"Commit your way to the Lord"
Dorothea E. von Mücke
1670
Hermaphroditism and the Battle of the Sexes
Klaus Haberkamm
1670
"The Entirety of Scripture Is within Us"
Dorothea E.von Mücke
1670
Natural Law
J. B. Schneewind
1689-1690
The Baroque Novel and the Romance Tradition
Emery Snyder
1690
Life's Balance Sheet
Jeremy Dauber
1710
"The Case of God Defended"
Haun Saussy
1729
A Scientist and Poet
Helmut Müller-Sievers
1735
Aesthetic Orientation in a Decentered World
Jochen Schulte-Sasse
1750
Reading for Feeling
Klaus Weimar
1758
Questioning the Enlightenment
Carol Jacobs
1765, February 8
"Educating Paper Girls" and Regulating Private Life
Chris Cullens
1767
A Woman's Design on Soldiers' Fortune
Helmut J. Schneider
1768, June 8
Becoming Greek
Suzanne L. Marchand
1773, July 2
Wieland's Cosmopolitan Classicism
Walter Hinderer
1774, January-March
Pathologies of Literature
David E. Wellbery
1775
Taking Individualism at Face Value
Fritz Gutbrodt
1778, February
The Confusions of Genre
Andreas Huyssen
1781, 1810
From Enlightenment Universalism to Romantic Individuality
James A. Steintrager
1782
Anton Reiser, Case History, and the Emergence of Empirical Psychology
Andreas Gailus
1784, October 12
The Universal and the Particular
Hansjakob Werlen
1785, August
The Limits of Enlightenment
Frederick Beiser
1786, September 3
Self-Censorship and Priapic Inspiration
Hans Rudolf Vaget
1788
A Snapshot of Civil Society
Isabel V. Hull
1789, June 2
The Disciplines of Attention
Lorraine Daston
1790
The Experience of Freedom
Paul Guyer
1791, September 30
Beyond Language
Karol Berger
1792
Identity and Community
1792, August 26
An Aesthetic Revolution
Klaus L. Berghahn
1796, April
The "German" Shakespeare
Michael Eskin
1796, 10 June
An Alien Fallen from the Moon
Paul Fleming
1796-1797
A New Program for the Aesthetic Education of Mankind?
Eckart Förster
1799, June
Holistic Vision and Colonial Critique
Luiz Costa Lima
1800
Intimations of Mortality
Michel Chaouli
1800, January
The Emergence of Literary History and Criticism
Bianca Theisen
1804
The Night of Imagination
Elizabeth Bronfen
1804, May 18
The Subject and Object of Mythology
Kelly Barry
1805, Summer
Homer between Poets and Philologists
Glenn W. Most
1806
Die Hermannsschlachtand the Concept of Guerrilla Warfare
Wolf Kittler
1808
Poetic Revolution
Rainer Nägele
1815
Folklore and Cultural Identity
Maria Tatar
1818
The Occult, the Fantastic, and the Limits of Rationality
Dorothea E.von Mücke
1824, October 2
Heine's Versatility
Susan Bernstein
1826, November 30
Art between Muse and Marketplace
Cordula Grewe
1828, Winter
Hegel's End-of-Art Thesis
Arthur C. Danto
1828, November
Schubert's Political Landscape
Reinhold Brinkmann
1831, July 21
Faust and the Dialectic of Modernity
David E. Wellbery
1833
Writing between Genres and Discourses
Barbara Hahn
1834
Viennese Biedermeier
Hinrich C. Seeba
1835
The Guillotine as Hero
Harro Müller
1835, December 10
Emancipation and Critique
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
1837, August 4
Crimes of Probability
Anette Schwarz
1848, February
The Reinvention of a Genre
Hans Martin Puchner
1848, September 12
Marginality and Melancholia
Chris Cullens
1848, October 11
Tales of a Collector
Eva Geulen
1853
Aesthetic Salvation
David E. Wellbery
1855
German-American Literary Relations
Werner Sollors
1860
A Model for Cultural History
Anthony Grafton
1865, Summer
Unruly Children
Anthony Krupp
1867
Intimations of Mortality
Kenneth S. Calhoon
1876, August 17
Wanting Art
David J. Levin
1882, August 26
Nietzsche and Modernity
Robert B. Pippin
1888, June
Germany's Heart of Darkness
Judith Ryan
1895
Apparitions of Time
Kenneth S. Calhoon
1897
Stefan George and Symbolism
Robert E. Norton
1899, August 6
The Dream as Symbolic Form
Stanley Corngold
1902, October 18-19
The Limits of Language
Reingard Nethersole
1905
Eroticism and the Femme Fatale
Maria Tatar
1906
An Alpine Vegetarian Utopia
Peter Wollen
1910, January 27
Urban Experience and the Modernist Dream of a New Language
Andreas Huyssen
1911, January 25
The Agency of the Past
Thomas S. Grey
1912, March
Provocation and Parataxis
Mark W. Roche
1912, June
The Lasciviousness of Ruin
Clayton Koelb
1912, July-October
An Optics of Fragmentation
Charles W. Haxthausen
1912, September
Kafka's Narrative Breakthrough
Judith Ryan
1913, October
The New Thinking
Eric L. Santner
1914, July
Ecstatic Release from Personality
Stanley Corngold
1916, February 5
"The Jingling Carnival Goes Right Out Into the Street"
Greil Marcus
1918, November
War and the Press
Leo A. Lensing
1921, April
Cinema and Expressionism
Anton Kaes
1922, February
Modernism and Mourning
Judith Ryan
1922, July 23
Lion Feuchtwanger's Jud Süss
Mark M. Anderson
1923, Spring
Photography, Typography, and the Modernization of Reading
Brigid Doherty
1924, October
Modernism and Hysteria
Elisabeth Bronfen
1927
The Limits of Historicism
Hans Sluga
1927, March
The Task of the Flâneur
John T. Hamilton
1927, June
The Lesson of the Magic Theater
Janet Ward
1928, August 31
The Urform of Opera
Stephen Hinton
1929, October
Narration and the City
David Dollenmayer
1929, Autumn
A Modernist Thought-Experiment
Burton Pike
1931, January
Irmgard Keun and the "New Woman"
Barbara Kosta
1932
Politics, Technology, and History
Hans Sluga
1935, March
Hitler's Imagined Community
Eric Rentschler
1936, February 27
The Machine Takes Command
Lindsay Waters
1936, May 1
Germans Reading Hitler
Peter Fritzsche
1937, June 30
Spectacle of Denigration
Peter Nisbet
1939, September
The Problem of "Inner Emigration"
Elliot Y. Neaman
1940, Summer
Crisis and Transition
Gertraud Gutzmann
1942-43, Winter
Origins of Totalitarianism
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
1943, May 23
A Musical Prefiguration of History
Hans Rudolf Vaget
1946, April
Guilt and Atonement
Robert C. Holub
1946/1947
Intellectuals under Hitler
Karlheinz Barck
1947
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
Andrew Hewitt
1949
History, Evidence, Gesture
Rainer Nägele
1949, October 7
Socialist Realism as Heroic Antifascism
Julia Hell
1952, Spring
Making History Visible
Jennifer M. Kapczynski
1952, Autumn
Poetry after Auschwitz
Stéphane Moses
1953, March 26
Coming to Terms with the Past
Bernhard Siegert
1953, April
A Ladder Turns into a Fly-bottle
James Conant
1958
Politics and Literature
Gordon A. Craig
1962, February
From a Tragedy of Physics to a Physics of Tragedy
Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
1963
Love as Fascism
Mark M. Anderson
1964, April 29
Dramaturgies of Liberation
Rob Burns
1967, June 2
Transformations of the Literary Institution
David Roberts
1968, August 21
Utopian Hopes and Traces of the Past
Julia Hell
1976, November
The Politics of Poetry
David Bathrick
1977, October
Intellectuals and the Failed Revolution
Arlene A. Teraoka
1979
Migrants and Muses
Leslie A. Adelson
1979
The Enigma of Arrival
David Roberts
1981, December 10
The Homecoming of a "Good European"
Maria Louise Ascher
1983
Critique of Violence
Beatrice Hanssen
1983, October 5-25
Anniversaries and the Revival of Storytelling
Jochen Hörisch
1984, September
Homeland and Holocaust
Eric Rentschler
1986, Summer
Democracy and Discourse
Robert C. Holub
1989, February
Remembrance as Provocation
Bianca Theisen
1989, November 9
A Republic of Voids
Edward Dimendberg
1999
The Skull beneath the Skin
Judith Ryan
2000
Spectaclesof Multiculturalism
Deniz Göktürk
2001, December 15
Gray Zones of Remembrance
Andreas Huyssen
Contributors
Index