Pretexts for writing : German romantic prefaces, literature, and philosophy

Zusammenfassung: "Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European-and, above all, German-Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise"--(Provided by publisher.)
Zusammenfassung: "In this incisive, original book, S. Williams reads prefaces to German literature and philosophy around 1800 as pretexts for writing, examining three of the most remarkable preface-writers of that era--Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel--in the contexts not only of German, but also European print culture, thought, and literature"--(Provided by publisher.)

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• ISBN: 9781684480531 ; 1684480531 ; 9781684480524 ; 1684480523
• Dimensions: 24 cm
• Extent: xi, 261 Seiten
• Language: Englisch

Classification and Topics

• Keyword: Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ; Jean Paul ; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich ; Vorwort

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
• (who): Bucknell University Press
• (when): [2019]
• Creator: Williams, Seán M.

Further information

• Table of contents: https://d-nb.info/1187531650/04
• Rights: Bei diesem Objekt liegt nur das Inhaltsverzeichnis digital vor. Der Zugriff darauf ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 11.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET