Without a beginning and without an end, Tristram Shandy moves in many different directions, defying the conventional expectations of its readers.

Wolfgang Iser's study of Walter Pater (1839 94) was first published in German in 1960. It places the English critic, essayist and novelist in a philosophical tradition whose major exponents were Hegel and Coleridge, at the same time showing how Pater differed crucially from these thinkers to become representative of a late Victorian culture critically poised in transition between Romanticism and Modernism. Pater's new definitions of 'beauty' and 'style' in art, his doctrine of 'art for art's sake', his preoccupation with aesthetic existence, his fascination with periods of balance and...

Durch grundlegende und fr ihre Methoden charakteristische Texte unterrichtet dieser Band umfassend ber die Positionen der Kunsttheorie in der Gegenwart. Eine dem Aufbau des Bandes entsprechende Bibliographie ermglicht ein umfassendes Studium der kunsttheoretischen Literatur.

WOLFGANG ISER: STEPPING FORWARD Wolfgang Iser's books include The Implied Reader (1974), The Act of Reading (1978), Prospecting (1989) and The Fictive and the Imaginary (1993). He has written books on Laurence Sterne (1988) and Walter Pater (1987). He was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Constance in Germany.

This book of lectures, essays and interviews includes pieces on Wolfgang Iser's work in reader-response theory, the literary text, British culture, and Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones. The interviews contain many insights into the nature of...

In a series of readings, the author examines Shakespeare's five major history plays and accounts for their continued popularity, both in film and on stage. He examines the historical context out of which the plays emerged, and describes how the period gave birth to a modern form of politics.

T. S. Eliots Projekt der Moderne ist so aktuell wie nie zuvor. In seiner Dichtung und Theorie schafft er eine dynamische Verbindung von Fragen der Anthropologie, Tradition und der Kultur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Dieser Band behandelt Eliots Verstehen von Selbst und Welt, deren Beziehung schon in der Philosophie, Mythologie und Religion der Griechen Beachtung fand. Eliots Ungenugen an den Offerten von Wissenschaft und Religion des 19. Jahrhunderts initiierte seine Suche nach Grundformen des Selbst- und Fremdverstehens, die Philosophie und Mythos fruchtbar zusammen bringen. Die dichterische...