New essays examining Goethe's relationship to the Jews, and the contribution of Jewish scholars to the fame of the greatest German writer. The success of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners(1997) and the heated debates that followed its publication exposed once again Germany's long tradition of anti-Semitism as a major cause of the Holocaust. Goldhagen, like many before him, drew a direct and irresistible line from Luther's pamphlets against the Jews to Hitler's attempted annihilation of European Jewry. This collection of new essays examines the thesis of a universal anti-Semitism in Germany by focussing on its greatest author, Goethe, and seeing to what extent some scholars are justified in accusing him of anti-Semitism. It places the reception of Goethe's works in a broader historical context: his relationship to Judaism and the Jews; the reception of his works by the Jewish elite in Germany, the reception of the 'Goethe cult' by Jewish scholars; and the Jewish contribution to Goethe scholarship. The last section of the volume treats the Jewish contribution to Goethe's fame and to Goethe philology since the 19th century, and the exodus of many Jewish authors and scholars after 1933, when they took their beloved Goethe into exile. When a few of them returned to Germany after 1945, it was to a country that had lost Goethe's most devoted audience, the German Jews. KLAUS L. BERGHAHN and JOST HERMAND are professors of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

New essays on the acclaimed Australian Indigenous author's entire body of work, including his novels, short stories, poetry, and his work with Indigenous language and health. Since the mid-1980s there has been a sharp rise in the number of literary publications by Indigenous Australians and in the readership and impact of those works. One contemporary Aboriginal Australian author who continues to makea contribution to both the Australian and the global canon is Kim Scott (1957-). Scott has won many awards, including Australia's highest, the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for his novels Benang (in 2000) and That Deadman Dance (in 2011). Scott has also published in other literary genres, including poetry, the short story, and children's literature, and he has written and worked professionally on Indigenous health issues. Despite Scott'snational and international acclaim, there is currently no comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes his work for scholars, students, and general readers. A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott fills this void by providing a collection of eleven original essays focusing on Scott's novels, short stories, poetry, and his work with the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project and Indigenous health. The companion also includes an originalinterview with the author. Contributors: Christine Choo, Arindam Das, Per Henningsgaard, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Jeanine Leane, Brenda Machosky, Nathanael Pree, Natalie Quinlivan, Lydia Saleh Rofail, Lisa Slater, Rosalie Thackrah and Sandra Thompson, Belinda Wheeler, Gillian Whitlock and Roger Osborne. Belinda Wheeler is Associate Professor of English at Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina.

"Thinking Allegory Otherwise" is a unique collection of essays by allegory specialists and other scholars who engage allegory in exciting new ways. The contributors include Jody Enders, Karen Feldman, Angus Fletcher, Blair Hoxby, Brenda Machosky, Catherine Gimelli Martin, Stephen Orgel, Maureen Quilligan, James Paxson, Daniel Selcer, Gordon Teskey, and Richard Wittman.
The essays are not limited to an examination of literary texts and works of art, and in fact focus on a wide range of topics that includes architecture, philosophy, theatre, science, and law. The book proves the truth of the statement that all language is allegorical, and more importantly it shows its consequences. To "think allegory otherwise" is to "think" otherwise-- to rethink not only the idea of allegory itself, but also the law and its execution, the literality of figurative abstraction, and the figurations upon which even hard science depends.

Taking a phenomenological approach to allegory, Structures of Appearing seeks to revise the history of aesthetics, identifying it is an ideology that has long subjugated art to philosophical criteria of judgment. Rather than being a mere signifying device, allegory is the structure by which something appears that cannot otherwise appear. It thus supports the appearance and necessary experience of philosophical ideas that are otherwise impossible to present or represent. Allegory is as central to philosophy as it is to literature. Following suggestions by Walter Benjamin, Machosky argues that allegory itself must appear allegorically and thus cannot be forced into a logos-centric metaphysical system. She builds on the work of Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas to argue that the allegorical image is not a likeness to anything, not a subjective reflection, but an absolute otherness that becomes accessible by virtue of its unique structure. Allegory thus makes possible not merely the textual work of literature but the work that literature is. Machosky develops this insight in readings of Prudentius, Dante, Spenser, Hegel, Goethe, and Kafka.