New essays by leading scholars re-examining major aspects of the work of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the great Austrian poet and dramatist. The Viennese poet, dramatist, and prose writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was among the most celebrated men of letters in the German language at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. His early poems established his reputation as the `child prodigy' of German letters, and a few remain among the most anthologized in the German language. His early lyric dramas prompted no less a judge than T. S. Eliot to pronounce him, along with Yeats and Claudel,one of the three European writers who had done the most to revive verse drama in modern times. His critical essays attest to the subtle powers of discrimination that marked him as one of the most discerning literary critics of the day. And yet he underwent a crisis of cognition and language around 1900, and from then on turned away from poetry and lyric drama almost entirely, concentrating instead on more public forms of drama such as the libretti for Richard Strauss's operas, the plays written for the Salzburg Festival (of which he was a co-founder), and on discursive and narrative prose. The body of work that Hofmannsthal left behind at his premature death is matched in its variety, breadth, and quality by that of only a handful of German writers. And yet posterity has not been kind to his reputation: those who admired the early work for its aesthetic refinement disdained his turn to more popular forms,whereas many of those who might have been receptive to the more committed and public stance of his later work were put off by his conservative politics. This volume of new essays by top Hofmannsthal scholars re-examines his extraordinarily rich and complex body of work, assessing his stature in German and world literature in the new century. Contributors: Katherine Arens, Judith Beniston, Benjamin Bennett, Nina Berman, Joanna Bottenberg, DouglasA. Joyce, Thomas A. Kovach, Ellen Ritter, Hinrich C. Seeba, Andreas Thomasberger, W. Edgar Yates. Professor Thomas Kovach is Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona.

New essays on the most prominent German dramatist and short-story writer of the early 19th century. For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for coming to terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research. Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons,Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Sean Allan. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German and Head of theDepartment of German at Ohio State University.

Proceedings of the Brandeis conference on Jewish Germanists who fled Nazi Germany and their impact on Anglo-American German studies. Among the Jewish academics and intellectuals expelled from Germany and Austria during the Nazi era were many specialists in German literature. Strangely, their impact on the practice of Germanistik in the United States, England, and Canada has been given little attention. Who were they? Did their vision of German literature and culture differ significantly from that of those who remained in their former homeland? What problems did they face in theAmerican and British academic settings? Above all, how did they help shape German studies in the postwar era? This unique and important symposium, which convened at Brandeis University under the auspices of its Center for Germanand European Studies, addresses these and many other questions. Among its distinguished participants--who numbered over thirty in all--are Peter Demetz (Yale, emeritus), Gesa Dane (Goettingen), Amir Eshel (Stanford), Willi Goetschel (Toronto), Barbara Hahn (Princeton), Susanne Klingenstein (MIT), Christoph Koenig (Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach), Ritchie Robertson (Oxford), Egon Schwarz (Washington University St. Louis, emeritus), Hinrich Seeba (UC Berkeley), Walter Sokel (University of Virginia, emeritus), Frank Trommler (University of Pennsylvania), and many more. The volume includes not only the (revised) essays of the participants but also their prepared responses, transcripts of the panel discussion, and dialogue of the participants with members of the audience. Stephen D. Dowden is professor of German at Brandeis University; Meike G. Werner is assistant professor of German at Vanderbilt University.