The study of Austrian and German modernist literature has a long and venerable history in this country. There have been no attempts yet, however, to reassess German and Austrian literary modernism in light of current discussion of modernity and postmodernity. Addressing a set of historical and theoretical questions central to current reevaluations of modernism, this volume presents American readers with a state-of-the-art account of German modernism studies in the eighties. Essays by Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Russell A. Berman, Peter (...) Uwe Hohendahl, Judith Ryan, Mark Anderson, Klaus R. Scherpe, Biddy Martin, Klaus L. Berghahn and Acbar Abbas, center around German and Austrian literary and philosophical prose of the early twentieth century. texts by well-known authors -Kafka, Rilke, Musil, Doblin, Benjamin, Benn, and Junger - and less well-known ones -Franz Jung, Carl Einstein, Ernst Bloch, Lou Andreas-Salome, are examined. Particular attention is paid to the processes and strategies by which certain experiences of "modern life" are translated into modern aesthetic forms. The unique contribution of this volume is that it combines theory with an attempt to reintroduce an historical and contextual dimension. The authors believe that their revisions of Ausrian and German modernism will themselves be informed by a new set of questions pertinent to the modernist debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature in MindH. G. Wells and the Evolution of the Mad ScientistAnne StilesIn 1893, H. G. Wells's article "Man of the Year Million" dramatically predicted the distant evolutionary future of mankind:The descendents of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their (...) mouths will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like the evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shriveled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds.2The editors at Punch evidently found this prediction hilarious, publishing a poem and accompanying sketch ridiculing Wells's lopsided future humans (Figure 1, p. 318). But not everyone was laughing.As ridiculous as Wells's bodiless, large-headed "human tadpoles" may seem, they were based on the most rigorous evolutionary science of their day. Wells, a lower-middle-class academic prodigy, received a prestigious [End Page 317] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1."1,000,000 A.D.," Punch, or the London Charivari, 25 November 1893, 250.[End Page 318]government scholarship to attend the Normal School of Science in South Kensington (later absorbed into the University of London). Though Wells left South Kensington in 1887 without earning his degree, he was greatly inspired by his biology teacher, famed physiologist Thomas Huxley. Wells absorbed Huxley's pessimistic take on late-Victorian evolutionary theory, particularly his emphasis on the inherent brutality of natural selection.Huxley's pessimism surfaces in Wells's dystopian scientific romances, which imaginatively probe the consequences of evolutionary theory run amok.3 Beginning with the eponymous mad-scientist villain of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and continuing with alien invasion narratives like The War of the Worlds (1897–98) and The First Men in the Moon (1901), Wells depicts brains becoming steadily larger and more powerful as bodies grow smaller and more useless, emotions increasingly muted, and conscience all but silenced. Wells's nightmarish vision of the massively over-evolved brain unites these three works, as the ruthlessly intellectual biologist Moreau morphs into the amoral, top-heavy Martians and lunar inhabitants.Wells's malevolent mad scientists and extraterrestrials owe an intellectual debt not only to Huxley, but also to discussions of genius and insanity in late-Victorian issues of Mind (1876–present).4 The now-familiar trope of the mad scientist in fact traces its roots to the clinical association between genius and insanity that developed in the mid-nineteenth century. Authors like Scottish journalist and materialist philosopher John Ferguson Nisbet, English eugenicist Francis Galton, and Austrian Jewish physician Max Nordau—all of whose works were reviewed in Mind—argued that mankind had evolved larger brains at the expense of muscular strength, reproductive capacity, and moral sensibility.5 Wells drew upon these arguments in his fiction and even contributed his own article to Mind, a philosophical reflection on science entitled "Scepticism of the Instrument" (1904).In its unique role as "the first English journal devoted to Psychology and Philosophy." Mind was an ideal venue for an inherently interdisciplinary [End Page 319] subject like the clinical study of genius.6 The journal's first editor, George Croom Robertson, was particularly concerned that articles in Mind rise "above the narrowing influences of modern specialism."7 This disciplinary breadth attracted contributors from all fields, including fiction writers and literary critics like George Henry Lewes, Grant Allen, Andrew Lang, and, of course, H.G. Wells. During the same period, literary works probed ideas discussed in Mind, such as the nature of the soul, the possibility of free will, and the ramifications of biological determinism. In the four decades following its auspicious start, Mind provided a venue where scientists, philosophers and literary authors could find intellectual common ground.In this essay, the early fiction of H.G. Wells will serve as a case study of cross-fertilization between literature and scientific ideas discussed in Mind. The goals of this exploration are threefold: to gain a better understanding of the journal's history and influence; to investigate why Victorians associated genius with insanity; and to illuminate the shared... (shrink)

The complex relationship between life and the arts has always Vbeen a crucial topic in philosophical discourse. The essays in this book discuss fundamental issues of modern and contemporary aesthetics, drawing upon the work of the French philosopher Jean- Pierre Cometti, a key fi gure in the studies of aesthetics, pragmatism, and Austrian philosophy. The volume covers a wide-range of topics, from the examination of fundamental principles of art and literary criticism to a new understanding of the Modernist (...) notion of art. It proposes an anthropological aesthetics using Musil's The Man Without Qualities or the analysis of literary characters such as Tolstoj's Hadji Murat and Cervantes' Don Quixote as a tool to cast light on themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Editors Carla Carmona and Jerrold Levinson have brought together renowned voices in the field of philosophy to offer a window onto Cometti's philosophical work, as well as an in-depth analysis of contemporary artistic and aesthetic practices, in an effort to overcome what can sometimes appear as a gulf between art and life. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

While Nietzsche's influence on philosophy, literature and art is beyond dispute, his influence on sociology is often called into question. A close textual analysis of Nietzsche's works and those of important sociologists - Max and Alfred Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, Rosa Mayreder - provides the first comprehensive account of their study and use of Nietzsche's writings. Above all, Nietzsche's critique of modernity, morality and culture are shown to have had a decisive influence on the development of sociology and the work (...) of its leading thinkers at the end of the 19thcentury and the beginning of the 20th. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INDIFFERENCE AND ENVY: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN ECONOMY Paul Dumouchel University ofQuébec-Montréal 1. Girard and economics René Girard himself has not written very much on economics, at least explicitly. Though his works are full ofinsights into and short remarks on the sacrificial origin of different economic phenomena or the way in which mimetic relations and commercial transactions are often intertwined and act upon each other.1 Unlike religion, (...) psychology, psychoanalysis, literature and anthropology, the analysis of modem and traditional economies from the point ofview ofmimetic theory has never been carried out by Girard himself, but for the most part by other people, for example, in the French speaking world, which I know best, essentially by Michel Aglietta and André Orléan in La violence de la monnaie (1982) and by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and myself in L'enfer des choses (1979) and as well as others, such as, by Mark Anspach, Andrew Feenberg, P. Lantz, A. Orléan, G-H. de Radkowsky and Lucien Scubla in various works on economy, economic anthropology, or the place and role of money in literary texts.2 In a way, this is somewhat surprising since the relationship between mimetic and economic phenomena, at least in a broad sense, was seen quite early on. For example, soon after the original publication Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) the French Marxist Lucien Goldman wrote in his Pour une sociologie du Roman (1964) that Girard's work was the most important book to read in order to understand 1 For example, Mensonge romantique (18-23); Des choses cachées (82-88). 2 See Anspach, Feenberg, Lantz, Orléan [passim], de Radkowski. 150Paul Dumouchel the effects of economic alienation on literature since Georg Lukács's Theory of the Novel (1920). Moreover in a footnote in Les origines du capitalisme (1971) Jean Baechler suggested that those wishing to understand the nature of the infinite desire for acquisition which capitalists economies have institutionalized should read Girard's book.3 Whatever the reason for Girard's relative disinterest in economic phenomena others have not been prevented from tackling this problem and it bears witness in a special way to the dynamism and intellectual power ofthe mimetic theory that its application to the field ofeconomics has essentially, ifnot entirely, been due to the work of others rather than to the efforts of René Girard himself. 2. The substantivist-formalist debate In the late 1 940's and early 1 950's a debate began that divided (and still divides) the community ofeconomists and ofanthropologists interested in economic phenomena. It concerns the nature ofeconomy and is generally referred to as the substantivist-formalist debate. It was first formulated in the works of the Austrian economist, Karl Polanyi.4 In The Great Transformation (1945), a book on the history ofthe formation and organization ofthe market economy in Europe from the late 1 8th to early 20th centuries, Polanyi already argued that the modem market economy was a rare historical accident. Furthermore Polanyi said, unlike what liberal and economic ideologies pretend, thatthere is nothingnatural aboutthe market. It does not correspond to any spontaneous human tendency to barter and exchange, and it does not arise by itself as soon as certain conditions are satisfied. Onthe contrary, modem markets have been put into place through sustained and voluntary state policies which consciously destroyed traditional solidarities, authorized the unlimited sale of land and labor and literally created the labor market, for example, in England through the Reform Bill of 1834 that repealed the existing Poor Laws which had prevented the free circulation of labor. The system formed by market economies, the balance of power among European states and the gold 3 Interestingly, 24 years later, in the second vastly enlarged edition of that work, Le capitalisme, (1995) the reference to Girard has disappeared though the text ofthe original work, which now constitutes the second part of the book, is otherwise reprinted in its integrity. 4 Actually Polanyi in The Livelihood ofMan (1977) sees the origin of the debate in Carl Mengers, Principles ofEconomics [1871]. Let us say then that it found its first modern formulation in the work of Polanyi. Indifference andEnvy... (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Aufsatz beleuchtet die komplexen Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Physik, Literatur und Philologie in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ausgehend von einem Brief des österreichischen Physikers Erwin Schrödinger an Ernst Cassirer gehen wir der Frage nach, inwiefern die prominenten deutschsprachigen Vertreter der aufstrebenden theoretischen Physik nicht nur literarische Texte und Inhalte verarbeiteten, sondern in ihrer zutiefst philologisch geprägten Publikations- und Arbeitspraxis auch textwissenschaftlich operierten. Lassen sich in den nachgelassenen und publizierten Schriften von Physikern wie Schrödinger neue Hinweise darauf finden, dass (...) die »Macht der Philologie« noch weit ins Jahrhundert der Physik nachwirken, ja Philologie vielleicht sogar als Wissensmodell in der theoretischen Physik fungieren konnte?This essay examines the complex interrelations between physics, literature, and philology in the first half of the 20th century. Starting from a letter of the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger to Ernst Cassirer, we investigate how theoretical physicists in the German-speaking world referred to literary texts and contents. Beyond that, we focus on traces of philological working and publication practices in the works of the physicists. To what extent and under what conditions could philology function as an inevitable knowledge model for the modern natural sciences? (shrink)

Laura Marcus is one of the leading literary critics of modernist literature and culture. Dreams of Modernity: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Cinema covers the period from around 1880 to 1930, when modernity as a form of social and cultural life fed into the beginnings of modernism as a cultural form. Railways, cinema, psychoanalysis and the literature of detection - and their impact on modern sensibility - are four of the chief subjects explored. Marcus also stresses the creativity of (...) modernist women writers, including H. D., Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf. The overriding themes of this work bear on the understanding of the early twentieth century as a transitional age, thus raising the question of how 'the moderns' understood the conditions of their own modernity. (shrink)

Can subjective taste regulate social norms or political practices? This book argues that from the late seventeenth century to the present national cultures have sought to regulate the democratic subject through the academic form of arguments about the proper relations of aesthetics to ethics and politics. In so doing it offers a radical reconsideration of the history of modernity, tracing the emergence of criticism as a socio-cultural practice across all the major European nations, and drawing on an extensive range of (...) European literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 4, June 2020, Page 486-488.

Heller examines the sense of values embodied in the works of key German writers and thinkers from Goethe to Kafka, particularly the consciousness of life's depreciation.

Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture. By Seth Jacobowitz. Harvard East Asian Monographs, vol. 387. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. xii + 299. $39.95.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Latin American Existentialist Ethos: Modern Mexican Literature and Philosophy by Stephanie MerrimTadd RuetenikA Latin American Existentialist Ethos: Modern Mexican Literature and Philosophy Stephanie Merrim. SUNY Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture. State U of New York P, 2023.If it seems like there is more turmoil in the world than usual, then existentialism seems more relevant than usual. Wars and rumors (...) of wars threaten to shift political boundaries and unsettle moral attitudes. Perhaps this is an opportunity for new philosophical investment in places not previously considered to be philosophically relevant. In the Western Hemisphere, this would mean directing attention south of the US border. [End Page 86]Stephanie Merrim's A Latin American Existentialist Ethos: Modern Mexican Literature and Philosophy encourages us to make this kind of redirection. I think the most valuable part of the book is Merrim's explanation of how Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus influenced Mexican philosophy, creating along with Catholicism a new philosophical situation. This signals an opportunity for those of us becoming productively bored with a traditional American philosophy centered on US philosophers. Merrim's work describes the birth, ascendance, and recession of the Grupo Hiperión, a creative friendship that led to the development of Mexico's philosophical and literary signature. "Hiperión's capacious existentialism sees no disjunction between freedom and advocating particular values" (58), Merrim concludes, adding later that its Latin American context produces a "theologically informed communitarianism" (59). This involves considering Sartre rather than, say, Peirce, James, and Dewey. It involves filling in "the gaps in ethics that eventuate from the French philosopher's commitment to ontology as well as from the aporias in his ethical thinking." In short, she says, "Hiperión supplements Sartre" (58).This is inspiring. The more standard view of American philosophy is that it has origins in European empiricism. Jonathan Edwards, for example, can be interpreted as one who adapts John Locke to a Puritan theological context. After this, there is a gradual dropping of the theological context. The focus remains on the United States, its development as a world power, and its leadership in advanced technology. The correlative philosophical development is thought to culminate in pragmatism, and then there seems to be an attempt to preserve it for a while by adding a "neo-" prefix.It's not that pragmatism and neo-pragmatism are bad. But their development correlates with the US domination of Latin America. As Merrim implies early in the work, existentialism is used to "shake us out of a mechanical existence, to destabilize us, awaken and prime us for happiness" (3). It is not that existentialism is used to destabilize; it's just that it appears on the scene whenever instability is present. Essence is always in creation, and all that can be said at this point is that the United States should not prescribe itself as the model for the creation of a Latin American ethos.It is on this point that I begin a small criticism of a book that is otherwise valuable in pointing many of us toward new scholarship and new interests. The problem is first evident in the translation notes, which indicate that "in order to engage a host of constituencies, this book translates into English all non-English material." This attempt by the author "to reach a broad readership" (ix) is an unnecessary accommodation. People in the United States [End Page 87] should have no less of an obligation to learn Spanish as the rest of the Hemisphere has had to learn English.When we move from language to philosophy, we see a similar over-accommodation. The author tries, but seems to have difficulty incorporating pragmatism into this new philosophical and literary movement. One example of this is the author's use of pragmatism in reference to a part of Rosario Castellanos's novel Rito de iniciación (Aguilar, 1997). One of the characters proposes a marriage of convenience that Merrim says would provide "a net pragmatism but not pragmatic authenticity" (175). If one has to contrast an authentic from a non-authentic version of a philosophy, it seems better to say that authenticity itself is... (shrink)

Irish literature after Yeats and Joyce, from the 1920s onwards, includes texts that have been the subject of much contention. For a start, how should Irish literature be defined: as works which have been written in Irish or as works written in English by the Irish? It is a period in which ideas of Ireland--of people, community, and nation--have been both created and reflected, and in which conceptions of a distinct Irish identity have been articulated, defended, and challenged; (...) a period which has its origins in a time of intense political turmoil. Corcoran focuses his chapters on various themes such as "the Big House," and the rural and the provincial and offers discussions of authors ranging from Kinsella and Beckett to William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Lavin, to provide a lucid and far-reaching introduction to modern Irish writing. (shrink)

Examines how the modern city is portrayed in art and literature, discusses modernism, futurism, and expressionism, and looks at the work of Rilke, Eliot, Pound, Joyce, and Brecht.

Madness and Modernism provides a phenomenological study of schizophrenic disorders, criticizing some standard conceptions of these disorders. Sass argues that many aspects of this group of disorders can actually involve more sophisticated (albeit dysfunctional) forms of mind and experience.

Engaging existentialism: transformative possibilities and local agendas -- The Mexican existentialist ethos -- The seminal Mexican existentialism of Rodolfo Usigli's theater -- Excavating Comala: the existentialist Juan Rulfo, the Grupo Hiperión, and lo mexicano in Pedro Páramo -- "Christs for all passions": José Revuelta's El luto humano [Human mourning] -- Rosario Castellanos's freedom.

In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years' War, when Great Britain was suffering a series of military reversals, Montagu considered his country's plight in an historical context formed by the study of five ancient republics: Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Rome. Montagu's focus on the ancient republics gives his contribution a distinctive twist to the chorus of voices lamenting Britain's decline, and his analysis exerted influence in three momentous eighteenth-century crises: the Seven Years' War, the American War of (...) Independence, and the French Revolution. This is the first modern edition of Montagu's work. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 -1776) was the son of a wealthy British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He was a student of oriental languages at the University of Leiden, which apparently proved useful during the peace negotiations at Aix-la-Chapelle which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. He is the editor of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (2012) for Cambridge University Press. (shrink)

Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the cognitive literary studies research that has been taking place within early modern Spanish studies over the last fifteen years. Next, (...) it traces the creation of self in the context of the novel, focusing on Cervantes's Don Quixote in relation to the notions of embodiment and autopoiesis as well as the faculties of memory and imagination as understood in early modernity. It continues to explore the concept of embodiment, showing its relevance to delve into the mechanics of the interaction between actors and audience both in the jongleuresque and the comedia traditions. It then centers on cognitive theories of perception, the psychology of immersion in fictional worlds, and early modern and modern-day notions of intentionality to discuss the role of perceiving and understanding others in performance, Don Quixote, and courtly conduct manuals. The last section focuses on the affective dimension of audience-performer interactions in the theatrical space of the Spanish corrales and how emotion and empathy can inform new approaches to presenting Las Casas's work in the literature classroom. The volume closes with an afterword offering strategies to design a course on mind and literature in early modernity. (shrink)

A psychoanalytic psychology and art of unconscious emotion -- An inward turn : Vienna 1900 -- Exploring the truths hidden beneath the surface : origins of a scientific medicine -- Viennese artists, writers, and scientists meet in the Zuckerkandl Salon -- Exploring the brain beneath the skull : origins of a scientific psychiatry -- Exploring mind together with the brain : the development of a brain-based psychology -- Exploring mind apart from the brain : origins of a dynamic psychology -- (...) Searching for inner meaning in literature -- The depiction of modern women's sexuality in art -- The depiction of the psyche in art -- The fusion of eroticism, aggression, and anxiety in art -- A cognitive psychology of visual perception and emotional response to art -- Discovering the beholder's share -- Observation is also invention : the brain as a creativity machine -- The emergence of twentieth-century painting -- A biological science of the beholder's visual response to art -- The brain's processing of visual images -- Deconstruction of the visual image: the building blocks of form perception -- Reconstruction of the world we see : vision is information processing -- High-level vision and the brain's perception of face, hands, and body -- Top-down processing of information : using memory to find meaning -- The deconstruction of emotion : the search for emotional primitives -- The artistic depiction of emotion through the face, hands, body, and color -- Unconscious emotions, conscious feelings, and their bodily expression -- A biological science of the beholder's emotional response to art -- Top-down control of cognitive emotional information -- The biological response to beauty and ugliness in art -- The beholder's share : entering the private theater of another's mind -- The biology of the beholder's share : modeling other people's minds -- How the brain regulates emotion and empathy -- An evolving dialogue between visual art and science -- Artistic universals and the austrian expressionists -- The creative brain -- The cognitive unconscious and the creative brain -- Brain circuits for creativity -- Talent, creativity, and brain development -- Knowing ourselves : the new dialogue between art and science. (shrink)

If indeed aestheticization and enchantment are perennial traits of state discourses and practices in China, it is perhaps unsurprising that a countertradition in modern literature should emphasize disenchantment. Cultural productions that originate from outside the sphere of the state have often questioned its authority. Where the state seeks to enchant, literature has sometimes sought to kindle doubt, to arouse debate. Although such debates have often been curtailed or suppressed, it is worth reexamining the connections between literary production (...) and political debates in different historical contexts throughout twentieth-century China. Drawing on theories that stress the intentionality of literature and the speech act value of the literary text, the present essay attempts to characterize the communicational dynamics both within the text and in the context of its reception. In this perspective, it revisits some of the literary debates that took place in China in the May Fourth and Republican periods (represented by Lu Xun), the early postwar years and the ROC—PRC transition (Lao She), in certain works written during the Cultural Revolution (Jin Fan/Liu Qingfeng), as well as post-1979 literature on the mainland (Yan Lianke). It does so by selecting texts that seem to have been produced with the intention of challenging the aesthetics of enchantment, using literary devices to interrupt readers’ enjoyment and thus open a space for public discussion of both aesthetics and politics. (shrink)