A Companion to the Works of Heinrich von Kleist (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

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For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for coming to terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research. Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons, Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Se?n Allan. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German and Head of the Department of German at Ohio State University.

Author(s): Bernd Fischer
Year: 2003

Language: English
Pages: 264

CONTENTS
......Page 6
INTRODUCTION:
Heinrich von Kleist’s Life and Work......Page 8
Critical Approaches......Page 26
Jupiterists and Alkmenists: Amphitryon as an Example of
How Kleist’s Texts Read Interpreters......Page 28
Kleist’s Penthesilea: Battleground of Gendered Discourses......Page 50
Language and Form......Page 68
On Structures in Kleist......Page 70
Strange News: Kleist’s Novellas......Page 88
The Eye of the Beholder: Kleist’s Visual Poetics of Knowledge......Page 110
The Performative Turn of the Beautiful: “Free Play” of Language and the
“Unspeakable Person”......Page 130
Intellectual Paradigms......Page 146
The Facts of Life: Kleist’s Challenge to Enlightenment Humanism (Lessing)......Page 148
“Betwixt a false reason and none at all”: Kleist, Hume, Kant, and the “Thing in Itself”......Page 172
Themes and Motifs......Page 196
Changing Color: Kleist’s “Die Verlobung in St. Domingo”
and the Discourses of Miscegenation......Page 198
Ripe Moments and False Climaxes: Thematic and Dramatic Configurations
of the Theme of Death in Kleist’s Works......Page 216
“Mein ist die Rache spricht der Herr”: Violence and Revenge in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist......Page 234
CONTRIBUTORS
......Page 256
INDEX
......Page 258