A difficult death : the life and work of Jens Peter Jacobsen / Morten Hi Jensen ; foreword by James Wood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jensen, Morten Hi, 1987- author.

Contributor:

Wood, James, 1889-1975, writer of foreword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jacobsen, J. P. (Jens Peter), 1847-1885--Criticism and interpretation.

Jacobsen, J. P.

Authors, Danish--19th century--Biography.

Authors, Danish.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxxi, 234 pages) : illustrations.

Other Title:

Life and work of of Jens Peter Jacobsen

Place of Publication:

New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Beautifully written and incisive, this is the first English biography of a major Scandinavian author who is ripe for rediscovery While largely unknown today, Danish writer and Darwin translator Jens Peter Jacobsen was the leading prose writer in Scandinavia in the late nineteenth century and part of a generation that included Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, and August Strindberg. His novels Marie Grubbe and Niels Lyhne as well as his stories and poems were widely admired by writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and James Joyce. Despite his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-eight, Jacobsen became a cult figure to an entire generation and continues to occupy an important place in Scandinavian cultural history. In this book, Morten Høi Jensen gives a moving account of Jacobsen's life, work, and death: his passionate interest in the natural sciences, his complicated and nuanced attitude to his own atheism, and his painful descent toward an early death. Carefully researched and sympathetically imagined, this is an evocative portrait of one of the most influential and gifted writers of the nineteenth century.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Prologue

CHAPTER ONE. "Simply to Be Remembered"

CHAPTER TWO. A Sentimental Education

CHAPTER THREE. The Modern Breakthrough

CHAPTER FOUR. A Woman without Qualities

CHAPTER FIVE. "Poor Freethinkers"

CHAPTER SIX. The Atheist

CHAPTER SEVEN. The Sickness unto Death

CHAPTER EIGHT. The Jacobsen Fashion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

"Published with assistance from the Danish Arts Foundation"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-300-23363-9

OCLC:

1002209742