German writers, be it Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx, Brecht or Mann, have had a profound influence on the modern world. This Very Short Introduction illuminates the particular character and power of German literature and its impact on the wider cultural world.
Nicholas Boyle presents
an engrossing tour of the course of German literature from the middle Ages to the 20th century, focussing especially on the last 250 years. He looks at key themes like idealism, modernism, and trauma, showing how they have imbued the great German writers with such distinctive voices.
Introduction
1. The Bourgeois and the Official: A Historical Overview
2. The Laying of the Foundations (to 1781)
3. The Age of Enlightenment (1720-1781)
4. The Age of Idealism (1781-1832)
5. The Age of Materialism (1832 to 1914)
6. Traumas and Memories (1914-)
7.
Austria and the Hapsburg Empire
8. The Literature of German-Speaking Switzerland
Further Reading & References
Index
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Nicholas Boyle is Professor of German Literary and Intellectual History at Cambridge University. He has so far published two volumes of his prizewinnning biography, <i>Goethe: the Poet and the Age</i>, and his most recent book is <i>Sacred and Secular Scriptures: a Catholic approach to
literature</i> published in 2004, based on the Erasmus Lectures which he delivered at Notre Dame University. Professor Boyle was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe-Institut, is a Fellow of the British Academy, and holds an honorary degree from Georgetown University in Washington DC.
