This anthology of German poetry prints a representative section from the work of seventeen poets writing from the mid eighteenth century to the present. There are poems by Klopstock, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Novalis, Brentano, Eichendorff, Heine, Droste Hulshoff, Morike, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Trakl, Benn, Brecht, Celan, and Enzensberger. The aim of the volume is to dispel whatever fears students may have about reading German poetry by suggesting that lyric poetry offers the most economical and enjoyable way of comprehending the range and variety of German literature over the past two...

The emergence of a new theory of literature in the German Romantic period constituted a decisive turning point in the history of criticism. A view of the literary work and the artistic process developed that diverged sharply from the dominant classicist understanding of aesthetics and poetics. It recognized the infinite changeablility of genres, and asserted the rights of genius and creative imagination. Professor Behler provides a new account of this crucial movement, illustrating each theoretical topic with close reference to a characteristic work by a major writer of the period.

This book is the first systematic attempt in English to examine the literary consequences of German reunification. In its emphasis on problems of national identity, it is one of the first books in any language to treat contemporary Germany as a cultural and national unity. In exploring the ways in which authors of the 1990s have sought to cope with history and national identity, the book addresses questions about the role of the nation and a national literature in the context of economic and political globalization.

This original book investigates the role played by literature in Sigmund Freud's creation and development of psychoanalysis. Graham Frankland analyzes the whole range of Freud's own texts from a literary-critical perspective, providing a comprehensive reappraisal of his life's work. His study reveals how Freud was deeply rooted in European literary tradition, examining in detail the rhetoric and imagery of his writing, the influence of literary criticism on his approach to analyzing patients and his creation of psychoanalytical "novels," quasi-literary fictions fraught with profoundly...

Stephanie Bird presents a detailed analysis of the twin themes of female and national identity within the works of three major twentieth-century German-language women writers. Bird stresses the importance of understanding ambiguity, tension and contradiction in the fictional narratives of Ingeborg Bachmann, Anne Duden and Emine Ozdamar. She studies the three writers closely and draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to clarify the complex nature of individual identity. This book will be of interest to literary and women's studies scholars as well as Germanists.

The year 1999 saw the 250th anniversary of the birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer. Appropriately, literary scholars within Germany and beyond paid tribute to this remarkable talent. But a number of commentators also noted that Goethe is often revered rather than read, known of rather than known. This study remedies this state of affairs by offering an introduction to Goethe and his works for the English-speaking reader -- now in paperback and with all quotations. The authors concentrate on the literary work and offer analyses that represent an impassioned, but by...

The tradition of the German novel, before the emergence of its 'classic' writers in the first half of the twentieth century (Thomas Mann, Kafka, Hesse, Musil), does not have an assured place in the canon of European literature. Not that it has wanted for spirited advocates; but, despite all efforts, it has remained firmly on the periphery. The one signal exception is Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers usually rendered as 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'. Werther was an extraordinary and immediate bestseller both in Germany and abroad.

Although Adalbert Stifter (1808 68) has long been recognised as a key figure in nineteenth-century German prose writing, his literary reputation has been curiously volatile. This major study, first published in 1984, was a reassessment of Stifter's work within the context of the tradition of nineteenth-century European fictional prose. The authors pay close attention to features of style, structure and narrative perspective in order to suggest that Stifter's heavily stylised prose expresses a profound and significant irresolution. On the one hand, Stifter seeks to assert that the natural...

The essays in this collection, which was originally published in 1986, address fundamental issues of literary realism that have long been given prominence by J. P. Stern, the distinguished writer on German literature and author of the seminal study On Realism. In the prevailing theoretical climate problems associated with literary realism assumed great urgency. Such problems are the notion of literary 'truth to life', the survival of the concept of 'realism' in the light of modern hermeneutical theory, the perspective adopted by the contemporaries of Barthes and inheritors of Nietzsche on the...