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On Goethe / Walter Benjamin ; edited by Susan Bernstein, Peter Fenves, and Kevin McLaughlin.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Benjamin, Walter, author.
- Series:
- Cultural memory in the present.
- Cultural Memory in the Present Series
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832--Criticism and interpretation.
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von.
- Authors, German--18th century--Biography.
- Authors, German.
- Poets, German--18th century--Biography.
- Poets, German.
- Genre:
- Literary criticism
- Translations into English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (384 pages)
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2025]
- Language Note:
- Translated from German.
- Summary:
- On Goethe contains the full range of Walter Benjamin's reflections on the central figure in modern German culture. The writings in this volume--newly translated, fully annotated, and framed by an extensive introduction--display a variety of styles and cover a vast array of topics. The collection revolves around two strikingly different essays. Whereas "Goethe's Elective Affinities " develops a theory of critique in which a work is illuminated wholly from within itself, an article Benjamin wrote on Goethe for the Soviet Encyclopedia represents his first large-scale attempt to elaborate a historical-materialist methodology. The other thirty translations stand in similarly productive tension with one another. Some are concerned with concepts of beauty and categories of the aesthetic, others with the relation of art to politics and the status of "classical authors" in contemporary culture, and still others with what remains of humanistic traditions in the wake of their disappearance under fascist regimes and what synthesis is required for the construction of a historical object. The volume provides a glimpse into the laboratory of Benjamin's thought, while granting readers a series of insights into the epochal phenomena that gather around the name "Goethe."
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 1-5036-4223-2
- OCLC:
- 1515481015
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