Culture and identity : historicity in German literature and thought 1770-1815 / by Maike Oergel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oergel, Maike, 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German literature--18th century--History and criticism.

German literature.

German literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Literature and history--Germany.

Literature and history.

Collective memory--Germany--History--18th century.

Collective memory.

Collective memory--Germany--History--19th century.

Germany--Civilization--18th century.

Germany.

Germany--Civilization--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (308 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : W. de Gruyter, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This interdisciplinary study examines the impact of the emerging awareness of historicity on the concepts of modernity, identity, and culture as they developed in German thought around 1800. It shows how this awareness determined the German notion of the priority of cultural identity. Key texts from Sturm und Drang, Weimar Classicism, German Romanticism and German Idealism, including Goethe's Faust I and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, are contextualised in relation to post-Enlightenment debates on historicity and modernity. The study traces the modification of the Enlightenment concepts of perfectibility and universal ideals to accommodate the new notion of temporal particularity and impermanence. This is achieved by embedding these once static concepts in a historical process that is powered by a self-prompting internal dialectic. Through synthetic absorption within the historical succession the dialectical process allows for the continuity of values, while leaving room for discontinuity and difference by relying on oppositional successions. The study reveals close connections between the intellectual concerns, the literary ambitions, and the endeavours to construct a modern German identity during this period, which suggests a far greater intellectual coherence of the Goethezeit regarding intellectual challenges and objectives than has been previously assumed.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Chapter 1 Historicity and the Definition of Modern Culture: The German Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and the New Concepts of Literature

Chapter 2 The Historicity of Modern Knowledge and Consciousness: German Idealism

Chapter 3 Historicity, Modernity and German Identity: "Stammvolk Europas" and Modern Kulturnation

Chapter 4 Grasping the Historical Dialectic of the Modern German Existence: Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

Chapter 5 Historicity as Identity: The German Myth of Modernity in Goethe's Faust I

Backmat ter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612195013

9781282195011

1282195018

9783110199970

3110199971

OCLC:

476023469