The Origin of German Tragic Drama
by Walter Benjamin
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Good+/Very Good-
- Seller
-
Brooktondale, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Translation by John Osborne of "Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels" (Suhrkamp, 1963). Introduction by George Steiner. Volume, measuring approximately 5.75" x 8.75", is bound in purple cloth, with stamped silver lettering to spine and front cover. Book shows light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Previous owner's name and address appear neatly written on front pastedown. Ten pages display red/blue ink markings. Pages 92-93, 228-229 exhibit a small foxing spot at fore edge. Pages are otherwise clean and without markings. Dust jacket shows moderate shelfwear. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover. 256 pages.
"Walter Benjamin is widely acknowledged as perhaps the greatest German literary critic of this century. "The Origin of German Tragic Drama" is his most sustained and original work. It starts with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of aesthetic interpretation, in terms of the "digressive" and "mosaic" insights which Benjamin believed were essential to the true art of criticism. It then moves to a consideration of the nature of the baroque art of the 16tjh and 17th centuries, concentrating essentially on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called "Trauerspiel." Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Dürer, and the theatre of Calderón and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history -- a "political" world without the transcendant meanings that had inhabited Greek drama.
The characteristic atmosphere of the "Trauerspiel" was consequently "melancholy." The emblems of baroque allegory point to the extinct values of a classical world that they cannot themselves ever attain or repeat. Their suggestive power, however, remains to haunt subsequent cultures, down to the century.
Georg Lukács, an eminent opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled "The Origin of German Tragic Drama" out as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the 20th century. For the English edition Professor George Steiner, of the Universities of Cambridge and Geneva, writes an interpretative essay introducing the book that will be indispensable to all students of Benjamin's work."
Synopsis
Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations , The Arcades Project , and The Origin of German Tragic Drama. George Steiner , author of dozens of books ( The Death of Tragedy , After Babel , Heidegger , In Bluebeard’s Castle , My Unwritten Books , George Steiner at the New Yorker ), is Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Palimpsest Scholarly Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 2933
- Title
- The Origin of German Tragic Drama
- Author
- Walter Benjamin
- Book Condition
- Used - Good+
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good-
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- NLB
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1977
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- German Literature, Cultural Studies
Terms of Sale
Palimpsest Scholarly Books
About the Seller
Palimpsest Scholarly Books
About Palimpsest Scholarly Books
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- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Shelfwear
- Minor wear resulting from a book being place on, and taken from a bookshelf, especially along the bottom edge.
- Cloth
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- Fore Edge
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- Jacket
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