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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich.

Contributor:

Butler, Erik, 1971-

Standardized Title:

Stimmungen lesen. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Literature, Modern.

Mood (Psychology) in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (149 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What are the various atmospheres or moods that 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, as 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. Reading, we discover, is an experiencing of specific moods and atmospheres, or Stimmung. These moods are on a continuum akin to a musical scale. They present themselves as nuances that challenge our powers of discernment and description, as well as language's potential to capture them. Perhaps the best we can do is to point in their direction. Conveying personal encounters with poetry, song, painting, and the novel, this book thus gestures toward the intangible and in the process, constitutes a bold defense of the subjective experience of the arts.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Reading for Stimmung

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

Harmony and rupture in the light of Caspar David Friedrich

Beautiful sadness in Joaquim Machado DeAssis’s last novel

The freedom of Janis Joplin’s voice

The iconoclastic energy of surrealism

“Tragic sense of life”

Deconstruction, asceticism, and self-pity

Acknowledgments

Bibliographical references

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780804783453

0804783454

OCLC:

813004705