Kierkegaard Literature And The Arts

In this volume fifteen eminent scholars illuminate the broad and often underappreciated variety of the nineteenth-century Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard’s engagements with literature and the arts. The essays in Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts, contextualized with an insightful introduction by Eric Ziolkowski, explore Kierkegaard’s relationship to literature (poetry, prose, and storytelling), the performing arts (theater, music, opera, and dance), and the visual arts, including film. The collection is rounded out with a comparative section that considers Kierkegaard in juxtaposition with a romantic poet (William Blake), a modern composer (Arnold Schoenberg), and a contemporary singer-songwriter (Bob Dylan). Kierkegaard was as much an aesthetic thinker as a philosopher, and his philosophical writings are complemented by his literary and music criticism. Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts will offer much of interest to scholars concerned with Kierkegaard as well as teachers, performers, and readers in the various aesthetic fields discussed. CONTRIBUTORS: Christopher B. Barnett, Martijn Boven, Anne Margrete Fiskvik, Joakim Garff, Ronald M. Green, Peder Jothen, Ragni Linnet, Jamie A. Lorentzen, Edward F. Mooney, George Pattison, Nils Holger Petersen, Howard Pickett, Marcia C. Robinson, James Rovira

Vol. 2 is dedicated to the use of Kierkegaard by later Danish writers. Almost from the beginning Kierkegaard's works were standard reading for these authors. Danish novelists and critics from the Modern Breakthrough movement in the 1870s were among the first to make extensive use of his writings. These included the theoretical leader of the movement, the critic Georg Brandes, who wrote an entire book on Kierkegaard, and the novelists Jens Peter Jacobsen and Henrik Pontoppidan

Vol. 2 is dedicated to the use of Kierkegaard by later Danish writers. Almost from the beginning Kierkegaard's works were standard reading for these authors. Danish novelists and critics from the Modern Breakthrough movement in the 1870s were among the first to make extensive use of his writings. These included the theoretical leader of the movement, the critic Georg Brandes, who wrote an entire book on Kierkegaard, and the novelists Jens Peter Jacobsen and Henrik Pontoppidan

Vol. 2 is dedicated to the use of Kierkegaard by later Danish writers. Almost from the beginning Kierkegaard's works were standard reading for these authors. Danish novelists and critics from the Modern Breakthrough movement in the 1870s were among the first to make extensive use of his writings. These included the theoretical leader of the movement, the critic Georg Brandes, who wrote an entire book on Kierkegaard, and the novelists Jens Peter Jacobsen and Henrik Pontoppidan

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- List of Abbreviations -- Karen Blixen: Kierkegaard, Isak Dinesen, and the Twisted Images of Divinity and Humanity -- Georg Brandes: Kierkegaard's Most Influential Mis-Representative -- Ernesto Dalgas: Kierkegaard on The Path of Suffering -- Martin A. Hansen: Kierkegaard in Hansen's Thinking and Poetical Work -- Jens Peter Jacobsen: Denmark's Greatest Atheist -- Harald Kidde: "A Widely Traveled Stay-at-Home"--Henrik Pontoppidan: Inspiration and Hesitation

While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists. This use can be traced in the work of major cultural figures not just in Denmark and Scandinavia but also in the wider world. They have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables, and allegories. The present volume documents this influence in the different language groups and traditions. Tome IV examines Kierkegaard’s surprisingly extensive influence in the Anglophone world of literature and art, particularly in the United States. His thought appears in the work of the novelists Walker Percy, James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, William Styron, Don Delillo, and Louise Erdrich. He has also been used by the famous American literary critics, George Steiner and Harold Bloom. The American composer Samuel Barber made use of Kierkegaard in his musical works. Kierkegaard has also exercised an influence on British and Irish letters. W.H. Auden sought in Kierkegaard ideas for his poetic works, and the contemporary English novelist David Lodge has written a novel Therapy, in which Kierkegaard plays an important role. Cryptic traces of Kierkegaard can also be found in the work of the famous Irish writer James Joyce.

While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists. This use can be traced in the work of major cultural figures not just in Denmark and Scandinavia but also in the wider world. They have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables and allegories. The present volume documents this influence in the different language groups and traditions. Tome III investigates the works of Swedish and Norwegian writers and artists inspired by Kierkegaard. In Sweden the novelist Victoria Benedictsson made use of Kierkegaard during the period of the so-called Modern Breakthrough, as did the playwright August Strindberg. Later Swedish writers have continued to draw on his thought, such as Selma Lagerlof, Lars Ahlin, Lars Gyllensten, and Carl-Henning Wijkmark. The Norwegian reception of Kierkegaard also began remarkably early and was shaped by the leading names in Norwegian cultural life. Despite his coy responses to questions about his relation to Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen clearly seems to have been inspired by the Dane in works such as Brand. Norwegian writer and poet Bjornstjerne Bjornson, who was influenced by the Modern Breakthrough movement, was also deeply inspired by Kierkegaard. Finally, the celebrated Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) closely studied key Kierkegaardian concepts such as anxiety, and his influence is notable in his iconic paintings such as The Scream.

"Eric Ziolkowski's monumental study examines Kierkegaard's whole "prolix literature" - including the pseudonymous and the signed published writings as well as his private journals, papers, and letters - in relation to works by five other literary giants. Kierkegaard himself stresses the essentially literary as opposed to the strictly theological or philosophical nature of his writings. Uncovering this neglected aspect of Kierkegaard's oeuvre, Ziolkowski first considers the notions of aesthetics and the aesthetic as Kierkegaard adapted them, then his posture as a poet and his self-conception as "a weed in literature". After taking account of the history of the critical recognition of Kierkegaard as a literary artist, Ziolkowski looks at an important characteristic of Kierkegaard's literary craft that has received relatively little attention: the manner by which he and his pseudonyms read and quoted other authors. Ziolkowski explores the connections between the philosopher's writings and those of other literary masters who directly influenced him, such as Aristophanes, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, and those such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Carlyle, who, while not direct influences, gave paradigmatic expression to some of the same aspects of aesthetic, ethical, and religious existence that Kierkegaard portrayed. A necessary resource for Kierkegaard scholars, philosophers, and students of religion and literature alike, 'The literary Kierkegaard' corrects a significant lack in our understanding of one of the most significant thinkers of the modern era." -- dust jacket.