Enlightenment and community : Lessing, Abbt, Herder and the quest for a German public / Benjamin W. Redekop.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Redekop, Benjamin W., 1961-

Series:

McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas ; 28.

McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas ; 28

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 1729-1781--Political and social views.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim.

Abbt, Thomas, 1738-1766--Political and social views.

Abbt, Thomas.

Herder, Johann Gottfried, 1744-1803--Political and social views.

Herder, Johann Gottfried.

Enlightenment--Germany.

Enlightenment.

Physical Description:

262 p. ; 24 cm.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca, NY : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Jürgen Habermas' pioneering work has provoked intense discussion about the rise of a modern public sphere and civil society. Redekop revises and expands the Habermasian thesis by demonstrating that, rather than being particularly "bourgeois," the eighteenth-century German public was a problematic, amorphous entity that was not based on a single social grouping - a beckoning figure that led Lessing, Abbt, and Herder on unique but comparable quests to give it shape and form. His perspective provides an important new understanding of the work of authors who have often been placed in overly narrow and restrictive categories.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1 Public Writers and the Problem of Publikum 29

2 United and Yet Divided: Lessing's Constitution of an

Enlightened German Public 58

3 Inscribing a Public Sphere of Citizens: Thomas Abbt's Response to the

Problem of Publikum 123

4 Language, Literature, and Publikum:

Herder's Vision of Organic Enlightenment 168.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-257) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85655-3

9786612856556

0-7735-6419-5

OCLC:

929121100