New essays examining the complex period of rich artistic ferment that was German literary Expressionism. More than any other avant-garde movement, German Expressionism captures the aesthetic revolution of 20th-century modernity in all its contrasts and conflicts. In continuous eruptions from 1905 to 1925, Expressionism upset reigningpractices in the arts, most vividly in painting and the visual arts. In the literature, a heady intellectualism combined with dramatic gesture, graphic visions, exuberant emotions and urgent proclamations to forge forceful stylesof verbal expression. Expressionism introduced into art both visual and verbal a shockingly new intensity with many facets and many faces. This volume presents the literature of German Expressionism, which is far less known in the English-speaking world, with essays by leading scholars on Expressionism's philosophical origins, its thematic preoccupations, and its divergent stylistic manifestations by writers whose common bond is intensity and whose lineson the page read like the gouges of a woodcut: Georg Kaiser, Walter Hasenclever, and Ernst Toller in drama; Gottfried Benn, Georg Heym, Else Lasker-Schuler, and Georg Trakl in poetry; Alfred Doeblin, Carl Einstein, and Carl Sternheim in prose, to name just a few. Against the background of the journals, exhibitions, and anthologies, the cafe meeting places and public life of Expressionism, the volume's highly focused, intrinsic analyses of texts and comprehensive overviews of extrinsic contexts (and of the most up-to-date research) shows the fervor and complexity of the period and its effulgent literary formations. Neil H. Donahue is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Hofstra University.

A new critical assessment of the works of the Austrian-Jewish author, in whom there has been a recent resurgence of interest, from the perspective of world literature. The twenty-first century has seen a renewed surge of cultural and critical interest in the works of the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who was among the most-read and -acclaimed authors worldwide in the 1920s and1930s but after 1945 fell into critical disfavor and relative obscurity. The resurgence in interest in Zweig and his works is attested to by, among other things, new English translations and editions of his works; a Brazilian motion picture and a best-selling French novel about his final days; and a renewed debate surrounding the literary quality of his work in the London Review of Books. This global return to Zweig calls for a critical reassessment of his legacy and works, which the current collection of essays provides by approaching them from a global perspective as opposed to the narrow European focus through which they have been traditionally approached. Together, theintroduction and twelve essays engage the totality of Zweig's published and unpublished works from his drama and his fiction to his letters and his biographies, and from his literary and art criticism to his autobiography. Contributors: Richard V. Benson, Jeffrey B. Berlin, Darien J. Davis, Marlen Eckl, Mark H. Gelber, Robert Kelz, Klemens Renoldner, Birger Vanwesenbeeck, John Warren, Klaus Weissenberger, Robert Weldon Whalen, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. Birger Vanwesenbeeck is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Mark H. Gelber is Senior Professor of Comparative Literature and German-Jewish Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

A new critical assessment of the works of the Austrian-Jewish author, in whom there has been a recent resurgence of interest, from the perspective of world literature. The twenty-first century has seen a renewed surge of cultural and critical interest in the works of the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who was among the most-read and -acclaimed authors worldwide in the 1920s and1930s but after 1945 fell into critical disfavor and relative obscurity. The resurgence in interest in Zweig and his works is attested to by, among other things, new English translations and editions of his works; a Brazilian motion picture and a best-selling French novel about his final days; and a renewed debate surrounding the literary quality of his work in the London Review of Books. This global return to Zweig calls for a critical reassessment of his legacy and works, which the current collection of essays provides by approaching them from a global perspective as opposed to the narrow European focus through which they have been traditionally approached. Together, theintroduction and twelve essays engage the totality of Zweig's published and unpublished works from his drama and his fiction to his letters and his biographies, and from his literary and art criticism to his autobiography. Contributors: Richard V. Benson, Jeffrey B. Berlin, Darien J. Davis, Marlen Eckl, Mark H. Gelber, Robert Kelz, Klemens Renoldner, Birger Vanwesenbeeck, John Warren, Klaus Weissenberger, Robert Weldon Whalen, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. Birger Vanwesenbeeck is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Mark H. Gelber is Senior Professor of Comparative Literature and German-Jewish Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.