The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar

by Bertolt Brecht, Anthony Phelan (Editor), Tom Kuhn (Editor), Charles Osborne (Translator)

Overview

Bertolt Brecht's extraordinary historical novel presents an aspiring scholar's efforts to write an idealized life of Julius Caesar twenty years after his death. But the historian abandons his planned biography, confronted by a baffling range of contradictory views. Was Caesar an opportunist, a permanently bankrupt businessman who became too big for the banks to allow him to fail – as his former banker claims? Did he stumble into power while trying to make money, as suggested by the diary of his former slave? Across these different versions of Caesar's career in the political and economic life of Rome, Brecht wryly contrasts the narratives of imperial progress with the reality of grasping self-interest, in a sly allegory that points to the Weimar Republic and perhaps even to our own times.

Brecht reminds his readers of the need for constant vigilance and critical suspicion towards the great figures of the past. In an echo of his dramatic theories, the audience is confronted with its own task of active interpretation rather than passive acceptance — we have to work out our own views about Mr Julius Caesar.

This edition is translated by Charles Osborne and features an introduction and editorial notes by Anthony Phelan and Tom Kuhn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472582737
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/28/2016
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists of the twentieth century whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and writing have had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera and, while exiled from Germany and living in the USA, such masterpieces as The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Anthony Phelan is an Emeritus Fellow of Keble College, the University of Oxford, UK.
Tom Kuhn is Professor of Twentieth-Century German Literature at the University of Oxford, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

The Novel

Book 1 The Career of a Distinguished Young Man 19

Book 2 Our Mr C. 51

Book 3 Classic Administration of a Province 137

Book 4 The Three-Headed Monster 167

Proposed Contents of the Rest of the Novel 193

Historical Events and Personages 199

Map of the Roman Empire 201

Temporal Structure of the Novel 202

Editorial Reviews

"Throughout the book, Brecht also sets up a Caesar whose political life and business life are indistinguishable, laying the groundwork for a larger argument about the interconnectedness of these realms. In a letter from 1937, he said he wanted this work to show, 'how democratic measures can be exploited financially' (Brecht 1990, 269). This is one of the major contributions of the book and gives it a use-value today, especially if we view it against the backdrop of the current U.S. election. Brecht's account shows that even where democratic structures exist, politics tend toward the machinations of the rich." -Anthony Squiers, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

From the Publisher

The book does not only stand on its novelty value: the novel itself is innovative and attractive in its form and its subject matter. It also adds to Methuen Drama's burgeoning Brecht list, but, rather than offering a variation on a theme, the novel is unique in Brecht's oeuvre itself, and should thus mark out its own place in the English Brecht list.

David Barnett

College and university libraries will order the book for their shelves, especially if they have a collection of Brecht's works. Departments such as Political science, Economics, Classical or Ancient Studies, History, Cultural Theory and Comparative Literature, and especially Interdisciplinary Studies would be able to use the text in their classroom literature. I would highly recommend it because without it there is a lacuna in the Brecht texts in English.

Paula Hanssen