Algo a destacar es que tanto en la primera como en la segunda serie -por cierto, no separadas por una división interna- abundan los tratamientos de asuntos y motivos escasísimamente visitados por la ...Filología alemana, y si bien el relato Michael Kohlhaas y el drama Prinz Friedrich von Homburg ganan, como era bastante predecible, es loable que muchos estudios encaren la publicística y los epistolarios de Kleist, por ejemplo, o bien ciertos aspectos juveniles como su idiosincrasia lingüística y su natural viajero, y hasta el impacto kleistiano en autores poco conocidos o en campos ajenos a la crítica y la historia literaria.
In the Age of Goethe major legal reforms occurred, which are reflected in the works of numerous writers. One of these authors is Heinrich von Kleist, who brings together different legal concepts in ...his novella Michael Kohlhaas (1810) and sets them in a conflicting relationship. Kleist, who is usually seen as being ahead of his time, not only reflects on the procedural reforms of the Age of Goethe but also anticipates reforms that will soon follow. What is often overlooked in discussions of Michael Kohlhaas is that the protagonist of the novella is not a typical avenger; he does not ignore current law in order to take the law into his own hands, rather he tries to draw attention to a corrupted juridical system in need of reform. As "one of the most righteous individuals of his time," Kohlhaas insists on a fair legal procedure and even accepts a death sentence as its consequence. It is not by chance that Kleist chooses the genre of the novella for his adaption of a historical case story: in German, Novelle can name the literary genre, as well as a revision of current law (Gesetzesnovelle).
his article examines the biographical and psychoanalytic works of Freud’s biographer Isidor Sadger (1867–1942), placing these works within the broader context of the role of lifewriting genres in the ...history of psychoanalysis. Sadger is presented as a key figure in the development of one psychographic genre in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (1902–1938). Although one of the most prolific authors within Freud’s circle, Sadger’s works remain largely forgotten. The author analyzes Sadger’s unknown psychographic and biographic works, and reveals his largely overlooked theories of literature and the psychology of creators. A close reading of his biography, Recollecting Freud (Sigmund Freud, personliche Erinnerungen), sheds new light on the relationship between life writing, literary experimentalism, and early psychoanalysis.
The motif of the Vehmic Court-a medieval "secret tribunal"-enjoyed remarkable popularity in German literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This paper analyzes the structure ...and function of Secret Tribunal scenes in two canonical plays of the time: Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1773), which served as a template for the development of the motif, and one of its most prominent literary echoes, Heinrich von Kleist's Käthchen of Heilbronn (1810). By defining how both texts handle, elaborate and transform the historical subject, the paper examines to what degree Goethe and Kleist functionalized Vehmic trial scenes in order to comment on contemporary legal debates. In both dramas, such scenes are embedded in a multi-layered discourse on legal practices, which places a particular focus on the divide between customary and positive law, though from different angles: whereas the young Goethe offers a negative picture of instituted justice based on Roman law, and praises Germanic customary law as a form of justice that balances the power of absolutist rulers over the people, Kleist offers a parody of Vehmic Court proceedings and advocates instead for modern forms of codified justice that are meant to gradually displace outdated judicial systems.
From Madame de Staël, Dumas, and Taine, to Giraudoux, Adamov, Ionesco, and the existentialists, this study provides a fascinating account of the progress of Kleist's reception in France from complete ...rejection in 1807 to spectacular critical and public acclaim in the 1950s. Richardson argues that Kleist's success in France disproves the traditional idea that his work is unexportable and shows the conditions that led to his positive reception outside Germany.
In seinem berühmten Essay »Über das Marionettentheater« entwirft Heinrich von Kleist eine Theorie der drei Stadien unserer Weltbezüge: von der unmittelbaren, unbewussten, natürlichen und ...naiv-anmutigen Verfasstheit über die bewusste, künstliche und unvollkommen-unbeholfene hin zur souverän-vollkommenen, absoluten und gottgleichen. Dieses Schema hat die unterschiedlichsten Ausdeutungen und Kritiken erfahren. Anlässlich des Kleist-Jahres 2011 beleuchten prominente Autoren in diesem Band jenes Drei-Stadien-Denken im »Marionettentheater« aus unterschiedlichen philosophischen Perspektiven und legen innovative Deutungen des Klassikers vor.
Questo saggio si interroga sullo statuto di Achille nella Pentesilea di Heinrich von Kleist. L'ipotesi avanzata e che Achille incarni l'oggetto del desiderio della protagonista: con la parola ..."oggetto" si intende la rappresentazione tutta interiore costruita da Pentesilea intorno alla "cosa" immaginaria da cui e involontariamente trasportata. Questa "cosa" prende le sembianze femminili di un tenero e inerme ragazzo incoronato di rose, un "Achille delle rose", per cosi dire - dove la parola "rosa" si fa anagramma del desiderio ed emblema del sesso femminile. Nel corso dell'analisi, si rivela che il miraggio oggettuale di Pentesilea diventa quindi la proiezione della "cosa stessa", das Ding, ovvero l'amore materno, il quale, risultando per sempre perduto, si trasforma in fantasma persecutorio. Tale ipotesi si radica, prima che nel paradigma freudiano-lacaniano del desiderio, nel contesto politico e storico in cui la tragedia della regina delle Amazzoni fu ideata nonché nella filosofía trascendentale (kantiana) e idealistica (hegeliana) del soggetto.
Tanti contributi nati in omaggio a Kleist in Germania (a duecento anni dalla scomparsa) hanno attinto alle fonti di un mito, quello di Pentesilea. Per quanto riguarda il teatro, gli spettacoli più ...interessanti hanno aderito all’estetica della performance, rinvenendo nella preminenza di un linguaggio fisico e visivo la loro ragion d’essere. Ma non solo: anche il cinema e gli altri ‘canali’ mediatici hanno offerto, paradossalmente, l’idea di una fisicità dirompente; o hanno ulteriormente adattato, trasformato, ibridato il classico della grecità che il grande autore tedesco aveva, già a suo tempo, rivisitato in modo decisamente radicale.
Contemporary German-Japanese author Yoko Tawada and Czech-born, German-speaking media theorist Vilém Flusser constitute an unlikely pair for analysis. Yet, both have produced multilingual oeuvres ...resistant to systematization and intensely preoccupied with the medium of writing. In her fiction-essay An der Spree from the 2007 collection Sprachpolizei und Spielpolyglotte., Tawada cites Flusser's essay Letters of the Alphabet from his 1987 collection Does Writing have a Future? Recalling Flusser's depiction of the Latin alphabets imagistic roots, Tawada rediscovers and retraces written signs (letters, logograms, and numerals) in Berlin. This essay argues for two key critical products of Tawada's contact with Flusser. First, Tawada reveals the Eurocentrism in Flusser's theory of writing and Western media theory more generally. Second, Tawada's narrators acts of writing and reading produce continual presents, which in turn revise Flusser's linear-teleological understanding of writing and time, and a common conception of our current age as one of simultaneity.
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