Atmosphere, mood, Stimmung : on a hidden potential of literature / Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht ; translated by H. Erik Butler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, author.

Contributor:

Butler, Erik, 1971- translator.

Standardized Title:

Stimmungen lesen. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Mood (Psychology) in literature.

Literature, Modern--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Literature, Modern.

Physical Description:

pages cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

What are the various atmospheres or moods chat the reading of literary works can trigger? Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has long argued that the function of literature is not so much to describe, or to re-present, but to make present. Here, he goes one step further, exploring the substance and reality of language as a material component of the world-impalpable hints, tones, and airs that, as much as they may be elusive, are no less matters of actual fact. The German word Stimmung is crucial to his project. It designates an inner feeling so private that it cannot be circumscribed and something objective that surrounds people and exercises physical influence; it also evokes voice and the tuning of instruments. Through an analysis of a wide range of texts from medieval to modern times, this book investigates the meanings that Stimmung to mind.

Conveying personal encounters with poetry, song, painting and the novel, this book thus gestures toward the intangible and in the process, constitutes bold defense of the subjective experience or the arts. Book jacket.

Contents:

Reading for Stimmung : how to think about the reality of literature today

Fleeting joys in the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide

The precarious existence of the pícaro

Multiple layers of the world in Shakespeare's sonnets

Amorous melancholy in the novellas of María de Zayas

Bad weather and a loud voice : Diderot's Le neveu de rameau

Harmony and rupture in the light of Caspar David Friedrich

The weight of Thomas Mann's Venice

Beautiful sadness in Joaquim Machado de Assis's last novel

The freedom of Janis Joplin's voice

The iconoclastic energy of surrealism

Tragic sense of life

Deconstruction, asceticism, and self-pity.

Notes:

"Originally published in German in 2011 under the title Stimmungen lesen ©2011, Carl Hanser Verlag."

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780804781213

0804781214

9780804781220

0804781222

OCLC:

770694284