Heinrich von Kleist

This book presents an integrated approach to the literary and non-literary writings of the major German author, Heinrich von Kleist. Analysis of Kleist's early letters, in particular, illuminates the oblique and unique processes by which he became aware of his vocation; simultaneously offering new perspectives from which to approach the works themselves. The discipline of recording observations based on visits to art galleries and travels through landscapes and towns in Prussia, Saxony, and Franconia stimulated Kleist's imagination, providing sets and scenarios which brought him gradually to an awareness of his innate dramatic talents. On a more theoretical level, he was led to speculate about the problem of illusion in art at the same time as he was wrestling with the epistemological implications of Kantian philosophy. The negative aspects of illusion which he drew from the latter were complemented by a new-found confidence in his ability as an artist to impart to the 'fragility' of the human condition a degree of fixity through form and structure and the coherence and control associated with verbal devices such as paradox and irony. These principles are shown to operate to varying degrees in all Kleist's works, and to gain in subtlety and depth, nowhere more than in his final masterpiece, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg.

Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul's novel, Siebenk"a (1796), the concept of Doppelg"anger has had significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. This study charts the development of the double from its origins in the Romantic period, through its more marginal, but nonetheless significant, manifestations in the post-Romantic culture, to its revival at the fin-de-si`ecle and transfer to the silent screen.

The Encyclopedia of the Essay is the first reference work entirely devoted to the essay as a genre.

Coverage begins with Montaigne, the first essayist, and stretches forward to Addison and Steele, The Spectator and The Tatler, Marivaux, William Hazlitt, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Robert Musil, Theodor Adorno, Nouvelle Revue francaise, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and across the ocean to Emerson and Thoreau, E.B. White, The New Yorker and Harper's, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion -- while also looking back to classical and medieval precursors.

More than 400 writers from around the world are included, along with geographic surveys that provide an historical framework, entries on types of essays, and entries on important single essays. Entries on closely-related genres such as letters, journals, treatises, sermons and reviews expand and explore the fluid boundaries of the essay as genre.

The twenty-one original essays in this volume offer a rigorous reconsideration of modern forms of paternity and friendship as they emerge in works by writers and philosophers from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. Exploring various models of these twin themes, contributors examine writings of canonical figures such as Goethe, Schiller, Hlderlin, Kleist, and Brentano, as well as Kafka, Benjamin, and Arendt. Together, the essays combine an emphasis on the German literary-philosophical tradition with comparative approaches, offering both theoretical discussions and sophisticated readings of crucial texts that have helped shape our contemporary literary engagement with paternity and friendship.

This collection honors Stanley Corngold, an influential scholar and teacher who has taught German at Princeton University for more than thirty years.