Dances Of The Self In Heinrich Von Kleist E T A Hoffmann And Heinrich Heine

Lucia Ruprecht's study is the first monograph in English to analyse the relationship between nineteenth-century German literature and theatrical dance. Combining cultural history with close readings of major texts by Heinrich von Kleist, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Heinrich Heine, the author brings to light little-known German resources on dance to address the theoretical implications of examining the interdiscursive and intermedial relations between the three authors' literary works, aesthetic reflections on dance, and dance of the period. In doing so, she not only shows how dancing and writing relate to one another but reveals the characteristics that make each mode of expression distinct unto itself. Readings engage with literary modes of understanding physical movement that are neglected under the regime of eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, and of classical ballet, setting the human, frail and expressive body against the smoothly idealised neoclassicist ideal. Particularly important is the way juxtaposing texts and performance practice allows for the emergence of meta-discourses about trauma and repetition and their impact on aesthetics and formulations of the self and the human body. Related to this is the author's concept of performative exercises or dances of the self which constitute a decisive force within the formation of subjectivity that is enacted in the literary texts. Joining performance studies with psychoanalytical theory, this book opens up new pathways for understanding Western theatrical dance's theoretical, historical and literary continuum.

Volume of new essays investigating Kleist's influences and sources both literary and philosophical, their role as paradigms, and the ways in which he responded to and often shattered them.Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was a rebel who upset canonization by employing his predecessors and contemporaries as what Steven Howe calls "inspirational foils." It was precisely a keen awareness of literary and philosophical traditions that allowed Kleist to shatter prevailing paradigms. Though little is known about what specifically Kleist read, the frequent allusions in his enduringly modern oeuvre indicate fruitful dialogues with both canonical and marginal works of European literature, spanning antiquity (The Old Testament, Sophocles), the Early Modern Period (Shakespeare, De Zayas), the late Enlightenment (Wieland, Goethe, Schiller), and the first eleven years of the nineteenth century (Mereau, Brentano, Collin). Kleist's works also evidence encounters with his philosophical precursors and contemporaries, including the ancient Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.the ancient Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.the ancient Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.the ancient Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.

John MacAuslan interprets four great Schumann works in the context of their literary connections and Romantic aesthetic concepts.

This book explains the elimination of maternal characters in American, British, French, and German literature before 1890 by examining motherless creations: Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men. These beings typify what is now called artificial life, living systems made through manufactured means. Fantasies about creating life ex-utero were built upon misconceptions about how life began, sustaining pseudoscientific beliefs about the birthing body. Physicians, inventors, and authors of literature imagined generating life without women to control the process of reproduction and generate perfect progeny. Thus, some speculative fiction before 1890 belongs to the literary genealogy of transhumanism, the belief that technology will someday transform some humans into superior, immortal beings. Female motherless creations tend to operate as sexual companions. Male ones often emerge as subaltern figures analogous to enslaved beings, illustrating that reproductive rights inform readers’ sense of who counts as human in fictions of artificial life.

This book is an exploration of the phenomenon of horror from an unusual angle. Focusing on reading specific examples of literature from Romanticism to Modernism, the study brings together the phenomenon of horror with the topical concepts of experience and intermediality and highlights the complex relations they present.

A new interpretation of European modernist dance addressing it as guiding medium in a vibrant field of gestural culture that ranged across art and philosophy

Susan Manning is a professor of English, theater, and performance studies at Northwestern University and the author of Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman. Book jacket.

This collection offers cultural historical analyses of enfreakment and freak shows, examining the social construction and spectacular display of wondrous, monstrous, or curious Otherness in the formerly relatively neglected region of Continental Europe. Forgotten stories are uncovered about freak-show celebrities, medical specimen, and philosophical fantasies presenting the anatomically unusual in a wide range of sites, including curiosity cabinets, anatomical museums, and traveling circus acts. The essays explore the locally specific dimensions of the exhibition of extraordinary bodies within their particular historical, cultural and political context. Thus the impact of the Nazi eugenics programs, state Socialism, or the Chernobyl catastrophe is observed closely and yet the transnational dimensions of enfreakment are made obvious through topics ranging from Jesuit missionaries’ diabolization of American Indians, to translations of Continental European teratology in British medical journals, and the Hollywood silver screen’s colonization of European fantasies about deformity. Although Continental European freaks are introduced as products of ideologically-infiltrated representations, they also emerge as embodied subjects endowed with their own voice, view, and subversive agency.