Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Boydell & Brewer
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Genesis
The Making of Literary Works from Homer to Christa Wolf
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2020
About this book
Illuminates how selected great works of literature arose, leading to deepened understanding of the works and harking back to what we still call the humanities.
This monumental study seeks the roots of great literary works and the processes by which they arose. It first illuminates the process from idea and inspiration through intention, formulation, revision (and sometimes frustration) to publication and reception. The textual studies that follow range from single poems to epic and dramatic works, from the genesis of new genres to that of a whole career. T. J. Reed sets the scene by going back to Homer's epics and the Bible, refreshing familiar scholarly material with new insights. Two early modern chapters then treat Montaigne, the founder of a new self-confidence, and Shakespeare, the beginner shaped by and shaping history. In the book's second half Reed concentrates on his specialty, modern German literature: Goethe, Büchner, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Brecht, Celan, and Christa Wolf. A sense of the origins of literary meaning in each case is a firm foundation for understanding, staying close to the quick of human communication. Against the depersonalized, skeptical, theory-laden readings of literature that have been dominant in recent decades, this study harks back to what we still call the humanities.
T. J. REED is Taylor Professor of German Emeritus at Oxford University.
This monumental study seeks the roots of great literary works and the processes by which they arose. It first illuminates the process from idea and inspiration through intention, formulation, revision (and sometimes frustration) to publication and reception. The textual studies that follow range from single poems to epic and dramatic works, from the genesis of new genres to that of a whole career. T. J. Reed sets the scene by going back to Homer's epics and the Bible, refreshing familiar scholarly material with new insights. Two early modern chapters then treat Montaigne, the founder of a new self-confidence, and Shakespeare, the beginner shaped by and shaping history. In the book's second half Reed concentrates on his specialty, modern German literature: Goethe, Büchner, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Brecht, Celan, and Christa Wolf. A sense of the origins of literary meaning in each case is a firm foundation for understanding, staying close to the quick of human communication. Against the depersonalized, skeptical, theory-laden readings of literature that have been dominant in recent decades, this study harks back to what we still call the humanities.
T. J. REED is Taylor Professor of German Emeritus at Oxford University.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: T.J. Reed
T. J. REED is Taylor Professor of German Emeritus at Oxford University.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Note on Quotations and Translations
ix -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Preface
xi -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction: Processes
1 - Part I Antiquity
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1: Homer’s Audiences: Shaping the Iliad (and the Odyssey)
17 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2: Fourfold Genesis: The Bible between Literature and Authority
37 - Part II Early Modern
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3: An Alphabet of Experience: Montaigne
55 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4: Beginner’s Luck: Shakespeare’s History Cycles
78 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Transition—Tradition
100 - Part III Goethe
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5: Cross-Purposes: Goethe’s Faust
101 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6: Occasions: Goethe’s Lyric Poetry
125 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7: Live and Learn: Werther and Wilhelm Meister
146 - Part IV Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century German
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8: Writing on the Run: Georg Büchner’s Revolutions
161 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
9: “The Best-Laid Schemes. . .”: Thomas Mann Unplanned
174 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
10: Description of a Struggle: Kafka’s Half-Escape
191 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
11: Atomic Beginnings: Brecht, Galileo, and After
209 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
12: Knowing and Partly Knowing: Paul Celan’s Mission
220 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
13: Christa Wolf: A Fall from Grace
231 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Afterword
239 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
241 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Bibliography
281 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
295
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 30, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781787448889
Original publisher:
Camden House
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781787448889
Keywords for this book
Literary creation; literary origins; authorship; creative process; literary analysis; literary history; literature evolution; writing techniques
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
