Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis has justifiably become an icon for the complexities of Weimar culture. Among the important general issues it also raises are the relation between ideology and art, the status and authorship of the film text in the entertainment market, the city, the construction of gender, the relation between the human body and the machine in modernity, and the relation between mass and high culture. This volume provides a broad range of materials and resources for the study of Lang's film, including both well-known, previously published critical essays and...

The Bildungsroman--the story of the development or formation of a young man--is the most famous German contribution to the European novel. In this study Michael Minden offers detailed readings of some of the best-known novels in the German language, from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre to Mann's Der Zauberberg. Taking account of contemporary literary theory, Minden uncovers aspects and motifs that subvert traditional ideas of the Bildungsroman, and raise questions about the function and status of literature.

Franz Kafka is one of the most important figures in twentieth-century culture. The fascination of his work has long since reached international proportions, and the concept 'Kafkaesque' has entered the English Language as an everyday part of speech.
This new edition of Kafka's famous story contains a critical introduction and notes which help to explain how the author achieves his particular effects. The editors are concerned less with what the story means then with how it blocks and baffles its reader, provoking them into an interpretation through its combination of clues and...