The Literature Of Weimar Classicism

New essays providing an account of the shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values of Weimar Classicism.

WEIMAR CLASSICISM: This descriptive term, designating a unique and verybrief epoch of literary and cultural achievement in Germany, is familiar to everystudent of German literature and culture. It was not always so. Only toward theend of the nineteenth century was the term introduced retrospectively in referenceto the few years at the end of the preceding century, which marked the high pointof the career of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who resided in the otherwise smalland provincial Duchy of Weimar and whose achievement as man of lettersestablished what ultimately came to be called OCyClassicism.OCO These were also theyears of the close friendship of Goethe with the dramatist and Kantian theoristFriedrich Schiller, documented by the nearly daily exchange of letters between thetwo OCo Schiller lived at the time in nearby Jena OCo which Goethe edited andpublished more than twenty years after SchillerOCOs death. The essays assembled inthe present volume would all acknowledge the legitimacy of this designation, even though they are addressed to various peripheral aspects of WeimarClassicism, related to but distinct from the work of its two central authors (theessay by T. J. Reed is the exception)."

These essays offer a wide range of topics treated from literary, interdisciplinary, and comparative points of view. The book falls into three sections: Weimar and Goethe; Weimar and German Literary Culture; Weimar Abroad; with a closure on Weimar and the Political Aftermath.

"The book provides an overview of related scholarly literature; discusses Nietzsche's aesthetic theory in The Birth of Tragedy; recounts the composition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and offers an interpretation of the "aesthetic gospel" in this centeal work. A concluding chapter explores the continuities in aesthetic theory from Leucippus to Ernst Cassirer. By demonstrating the constitutive function of the aesthetics of Weimar classicism in his philosophy, this book opens up a fresh and original perspective on reading Nietzsche."--BOOK JACKET.

Originally published in 1980, this book examines the nature and significance of Classicism as a literary phenomenon and relates the beginnings of the German variety to the search for a national identity in the circumstances of a politically fragmented eighteenth century Germany. It surveys the pre-classical scene, traces the intellectual currents and the literary forms and material which Classicism was to synthesise, and presents its theoretical basis. The major works of Goethe and Schiller in the decade of their partnership are analysed. Their response to political events is placed in the contemporary context and the divergences which challenge Classicism are discussed.

"The concept of dilettantism has not always been associated with amateurism or superficiality. It played a significant role in French and German critical writing from the late eighteenth century until the fin de siecle, embracing notions such as apprenticeship, fruitful error, parody, aestheticism and scepticism. Attempts to define dilettantism in a binary relationship with art have often been defeated by a fundamental ambivalence towards its values. The major texts on the subject are Goethe and Schiller's unfinished 'dilettantism project' (1799) and Paul Bourget's essay on Ernest Renan (1882), although the term was also used by writers including Wieland, Baudelaire, Laforgue, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann. In this wide-ranging study Richard Hibbitt provides the first book-length comparative analysis of the concept of dilettantism, tracing its chronological development and proposing a synthesis of its diverse aspects and values."

Explains the development of Romantic arts and culture in Germany, with both individual artists and key themes covered in detail.

A paperback of the hardcover edition, first published in 1962. The book describes Goethe's Weimar from documents and research and interprets the connections between German culture and German society both in the age of Goethe and later. To this book Professor Bruford has written a sequel, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation, and the two books together offer an introduction to the whole evolution of the German intellectual tradition.