The literature of Weimar classicism / edited by Simon Richter.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Richter, Simon, editor.

Series:

Camden House history of German literature ; v. 7.

The Camden House history of German literature ; v. 7

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

German literature.

Classicism--Germany--Weimar (Thuringia)--History--18th century.

Classicism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 407 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Suffolk : Boydell & Brewer, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Germany, Weimar Classicism (roughly the period from Goethe's return to Germany from Italy in 1788 to the death of his friend and collaborator Schiller in 1805) is widely regarded as an apogee of literary art. But outside of Germany, Goethe is considered a Romantic, and the notion of Weimar Classicism as a distinct period is viewed with skepticism. This volume of new essays regards the question of literary period as a red herring: Weimar Classicism is best understood as a project that involved the ambitious attempt not only to imagine but also to achieve a new quality of wholeness in human life and culture at a time when fragmentation, division, and alienation appeared to be the norm. By not succumbing to the myth of Weimar and its literary giants, but being willing to explore the phenomenon as a complex cultural system with a unique signature, this book provides an account of its shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values. Contributions from leading German, British, and North American scholars open up multiple interdisciplinary perspectives on the period. Essays on the novel, poetry, drama, and theater are joined by accounts of politics, philosophy, visual culture, women writers, and science. The reader is introduced to the full panoply of cultural life in Weimar, its accomplishments as well as its excesses and follies. Emancipatory and doctrinaire by turns, the project of Weimar Classicism is best approached as a complex whole. Contributors: Dieter Borchmeyer, Charles Grair, Gail Hart, Thomas Saine, Jane Brown, Cyrus Hamlin, Roger Stephenson, Elisabeth Krimmer, Helmut Pfotenhauer, Benjamin Bennett, Astrida Orle Tantillo, W. Daniel Wilson. Simon J. Richter is associate professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania.

Contents:

What is classicism? / Dieter Borchmeyer

Antiquity and Weimar classicism / Charles A. Grair

The correspondences' noncorrespondence : Goethe, Schiller and the Briefwechsel / Gail Hart

Johann Gottfried Herder: the Weimar classic back of the (city) church / Thomas P. Saine

Drama and theatrical practice in Weimar classicism / Jane K. Brown

German classical poetry / Cyrus Hamlin

The novel in Weimar classicism: symbolic form and symbolic pregnance / R.H. Stephenson

German women writers and classicism / Elisabeth Krimmer

Weimar classicism as visual culture / Helmut Pfotenhauer

The irrelevance of aesthetics and the de-theorizing of the self in "classical" Weimar / Benjamin Bennett

Goethe's "classical" science / Astrida Orle Tantillo

The political context of Weimar classicism / W. Daniel Wilson.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-398) and index.

ISBN:

1-281-77063-9

9786611770631

1-57113-661-4

OCLC:

923577817