Demonic History : From Goethe to the Present

Kirk Wetters

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780810129764
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: German Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this ambitious book, Kirk Wetters traces the genealogy of the demonic in German literature from its imbrications in Goethe to its varying legacies in the work of essential authors, both canonical and less well known, such as Gundolf, Spengler, Benjamin, Lukács, and Doderer. Wetters focuses especially on the philological and metaphorological resonances of the demonic from its core formations through its appropriations in the tumultuous twentieth century. Propelled by equal parts theoretical and historical acumen, Wetters explores the ways in which the question of the demonic has been employed to multiple theoretical, literary, and historico-political ends. He thereby produces an intellectual history that will be consequential both to scholars of German literature and to comparatists.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One. Urworte Goethisch: Demonic Primal Words
• Chapter Two. Demons of Morphology
• Chapter Three. Biographical Demons (Goethe’s Poetry and Truth)
• Chapter Four. The Unhappy Endings of Morphology: Oswald Spengler’s Demonic History
• Chapter Five. Demonic Ambivalences: Walter Benjamin’s Counter-Morphology
• Chapter Six. Georg Lukács and the Demonic Novel
• Chapter Seven. Demonic Inheritances: Heimito von Doderer’s The Demons
• Conclusion. Transformations of the Demonic
• Appendix: German Text and English Translation of Goethe’s “Urworte Orphisch” (with Commentary)
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index