The Novelle is a characteristic German literary form, easier to recognize than to define, except as a brief novel or a long short story. The main body of this book is devoted to interpretative essays on individual Novellen. In a sense they all illustrate one central problem: the relationship of the narrator to his story, and the importance of this relationship for its interpretation. Professor Ellis begins with an analytical chapter which faces the problem of defining the genre, using an approach derived from conceptual analysis. The individual studies are of works by Kleist, Tieck, Hoffmann, Grillparzwe, Keller, Storm, Hauptmann and Kafka. This is a book which will help students and scholars to categorize and criticize an important genre, and it may well serve as an introduction to the whole study for the English-speaking reader.

Ellis's book confronts directly the most central issue of Kleist criticism: the essential nature and meaning of his work. Rather than provide a general survey of Kleist's writings, Ellis performs an analysis of six of his most mature works: Der Findling, Die Marquise von O. . ., Das Erdbeben in Chili, Der Zweitkampf, Michael Kohlhaas, and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg. Ellis draws some general conclusions about the uniquely Kleistian character of these six works which are at sharp variance with previous Kleist criticism.

In the span of less than a generation, university humanities departments have experienced an almost unbelievable reversal of attitudes, now attacking and undermining what had previously been considered best and most worthy in the Western tradition. John M. Ellis here scrutinizes the new regime in humanistic studies. He offers a careful, intelligent analysis that exposes the weaknesses of notions that are fashionable in humanities today. In a clear voice, with forceful logic, he speaks out against the orthodoxy that has installed race, gender, and class perspectives at the center of college humanities curricula. Ellis begins by showing that political correctness is a recurring impulse of Western society and one that has a discouraging history. He reveals the contradictions and misconceptions that surround the new orthodoxy and demonstrates how it is most deficient just where it imagines itself to be superior. Ellis contends that humanistic education today, far from being historically aware, relies on anachronistic thinking; far from being skeptical of Western values, represents a ruthless and unskeptical Western extremism; far from being valuable in bringing political perspectives to bear, presents politics that are crude and unreal; far from being sophisticated in matters of "theory," is largely ignorant of the range and history of critical theory; far from valuing diversity, is unable to respond to the great sweep of literature. In a concluding chapter, Ellis surveys the damage that has been done to higher education and examines the prospects for change.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.