Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy
Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European-and, above all, German-Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
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Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy
Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European-and, above all, German-Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
37.95 In Stock
Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy

Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy

by Seán M. Williams
Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy
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Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy

Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy

by Seán M. Williams

Overview

Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European-and, above all, German-Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781684480524
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Publication date: 03/01/2019
Series: New Studies in the Age of Goethe
Pages: 278
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 16 Years

About the Author

Seán M. Williams is a lecturer in German and European cultural history in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sheffield, UK, following an appointment as Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow. He was previously lecturer (“wissenschaftlicher Assistent”) in German and comparative literature at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He has publishedon German literature and philosophy around 1800, in comparative contexts.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations ix

A Note on Translations xi

Introduction: What Prefaces Are Not: Pedantic Notes 1

Chapter 1 Goethe: A Playful and Resistive Set of Preface Strategies 37

Chapter 2 Jean Paul: Autoprefacing 88

Chapter 3 Hegel: Prefatorial Polemic Becomes Philosophy 147

Conclusion 194

Acknowledgments 205

Notes 207

Bibliography 233

Index 255

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Literary Criticism
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Modern Literature
19th-century literature->Criticism->General

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