On Goethe
  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

About this book

On Goethe contains the full range of Walter Benjamin's reflections on the central figure in modern German culture. The writings in this volume—newly translated, fully annotated, and framed by an extensive introduction—display a variety of styles and cover a vast array of topics. The collection revolves around two strikingly different essays. Whereas "Goethe's Elective Affinities" develops a theory of critique in which a work is illuminated wholly from within itself, an article Benjamin wrote on Goethe for the Soviet Encyclopedia represents his first large-scale attempt to elaborate a historical-materialist methodology. The other thirty translations stand in similarly productive tension with one another. Some are concerned with concepts of beauty and categories of the aesthetic, others with the relation of art to politics and the status of "classical authors" in contemporary culture, and still others with what remains of humanistic traditions in the wake of their disappearance under fascist regimes and what synthesis is required for the construction of a historical object. The volume provides a glimpse into the laboratory of Benjamin's thought, while granting readers a series of insights into the epochal phenomena that gather around the name "Goethe."

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Yes, you can access On Goethe by Walter Benjamin, Peter Fenves,Kevin McLaughlin,Susan Bernstein in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & German Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Abbreviations
  8. Note on Translation
  9. Introduction
  10. Part I
  11. Part II
  12. Books by and about Goethe in “Registry of Readings”
  13. Further Readings
  14. Guide to Names
  15. Glossary
  16. Notes
  17. Index of Goethe Citations (English-German)
  18. Name Index
  19. Note on the Translators
  20. Cultural Memory in the Present