New, wide-ranging essays on the controversial poet, who was both a harbinger of Modernism and a critic of modernity. Stefan George (1868-1933) is along with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke one of the pre-eminent German poets of the twentieth century. He also had an important, albeit controversial and provocative role in German cultural history. It is generally agreed that he played a significant part in the transition of German literature to Modernism, particularly in poetry. At the same time he was an outspoken critic of modernity. He believed that only anall-encompassing cultural renewal could save modern man. Although George is often linked with the l'art pour l'art movement, and although his artistic consciousness was formed by European aestheticism, his poetry and the writings that emerged from the poets and intellectuals he gathered around him in the George Circle are above all a scathing commentary on the political, social, and cultural situation in Germany at the turn of the century. George, who was imbued with the idea of the poet as a prophet and priest, saw himself as the Messiah of a New Hellenism and a New Reich led by an intellectual and aesthetic elite consisting of men who were bonded together through their allegiance to a charismatic leader. Some of the values that George proclaimed, among them a glorification of power, of heroism and self-sacrifice, were seized upon by the National Socialists, and subsequently his writings andthose of his circle were considered by some to be proto-fascist. It did not help his reputation that after the Second World War much of the criticism of his works was practiced by uncritical, hagiographic George worshippers. In recent years, however, there has been a renewed and unbiased interest among scholars and critics in George and his circle. The wide-ranging and original essays in this volume explore anew George's poetry and his contribution to Modernism, the relation between his vision of a New Reich and fascist ideology, and his importance as a cultural critic. Jens Rieckmann is Professor of German at the University of California, Irvine.

Rilke is one of the leading poets of European Modernism, and one of the great twentieth-century lyric poets in German. From The Book of Hours in 1905 to the Sonnets of Orpheus written in 1922, he constantly probed the relationship between his art and the world around him, moving from the neo-romantic and the mystic towards the precise craft of expressing the everyday in poetry. This new edition--the only bilingual edition to include such a broad range of poems--fully reflects Rilke's poetic development. It contains the full text of the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, and selected poems from The Book of Images, New Poems, and earlier volumes, and from the uncollected poetry 1906-26. The translations are accurate, sensitive, and nuanced, and are accompanied by an introduction and notes that chart the development of Rilke's poetic practice and his central role in modern poetry. The book also includes a chronology, select bibliography, and explanatory notes that identify people and places, and include key commentary by Rilke from letters or notes.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'An indescribable, aching, futile longing for myself' The young Danish aristocrat Malte Laurids Brigge has been left rootless by the early death of his parents. Now living in Paris, Malte begins to record his life in a series of loosely connected notes, diary entries, prose poems, parables and stories, ostensibly collected by a fictional editor to form the Notebooks. Focusing on Malte's observations and experiences in the present, recollections of his childhood and family, and his reflections on historical events, these notes in highly crafted poetic prose explore the themes of life in the metropolis, poverty, sickness and death, love, memory and time, and perception and language. The only extended prose work by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a landmark in the development of the twentieth-century novel. It marks a radical departure from nineteenth-century realism, transcending conventions of linear narrative to reflect a consciousness in crisis, and an archetypal confrontation with the modern. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Austria is, topographically, an Alpine country. Yet the mountains that cover two thirds of modern Austria's territory are often still viewed as a provincial location in contrast to cosmopolitan Vienna, the nation's cultural centre. The essays in this volume survey the complex relationship between Austria and the Alps, spanning a period from the final decades of Habsburg rule to the present. Among the topics addressed by the authors are the work of both lesser-known and established writers and commentators; Heimat and place in relation to musical and film genres; the social, political and cultural impact of Alpinism; and the representation of the Alps in recent exhibitions.

The chronological range covered by the individual essays is more than two hundred years, from the Classical Enlightenment to the early twenty-first century. Some of the studies encompassed by this volume undertake the analysis of one composer's settings of a particular poet's work - albeit with rather more critical rigour. Others trace the ways in which a literary text is modified and adapted before and as it develops as one of the principal components of an opera. Several share new insights into the complex relationships of individual works with the literary and musical traditions out of which they emerge (or which they transform and renew) - or set such works in the political contexts of their genesis or reception, often using a key historical moment, a turning-point or a 'snapshot', as the starting-point for a wide-ranging investigation. In some cases the words and the music are those of the same 'composer', the relationship here shedding light on the process of composition itself. Literary works are often scrutinized for the light they shed on a musician's creative processes, but the importance of music to writers - as audiences, but also as amateur or even semi-professional practitioners - is no less important as an investigative standpoint.

Often regarded as the greatest German poet of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 1926) remains one of the most influential figures of European modernism. In this Companion, leading scholars offer informative and thought-provoking essays on his life and social context, his correspondence, all his major collections of poetry including most famously the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, and his seminal novel of Modernist anxiety, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rilke's critical contexts are explored in detail: his relationship with philosophy and the visual arts, his place within modernism and his relationship to European literature, and his reception in Europe and beyond. With its invaluable guide to further reading and a chronology of Rilke's life and work, this Companion will provide an accessible, engaging account of this extraordinary poet whose legacy looms so large today.

Often regarded as the greatest German poet of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 1926) remains one of the most influential figures of European modernism. In this Companion, leading scholars offer informative and thought-provoking essays on his life and social context, his correspondence, all his major collections of poetry including most famously the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, and his seminal novel of Modernist anxiety, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rilke's critical contexts are explored in detail: his relationship with philosophy and the visual arts, his place within modernism and his relationship to European literature, and his reception in Europe and beyond. With its invaluable guide to further reading and a chronology of Rilke's life and work, this Companion will provide an accessible, engaging account of this extraordinary poet whose legacy looms so large today.

The influence of foreign cultures on German literature and other cultural productions since the 18th century. The Edinburgh German Yearbook is devoted to German Studies in an international context. It publishes original English- and German-language contributions on a wide range of topics from scholars around the world. Each volumeis based on a single broad theme: the first includes papers from the highly successful conference Kennst du das Land: Cultural Exchange in German Literature, held in Edinburgh in December 2006, supplemented by additional essays. The conviction that German culture and the German spirit are triumphantly unique has played a notorious role in Germany's history. It is nonetheless acknowledged that German literature has been significantly influenced by non-German sources, and the search for what is unique about Germany and German literature must incorporate an awareness of these. This volume provides a wide-ranging investigation into how German literature from the 18th century tothe present day reflects interactions between German and non-German cultures. Alongside theoretical and historical reflections on the nature of cultural exchange, contributions explore literary reception, the boundaries of and movement between cultures, and Germany's literary, political, cultural, and religious relations with both near neighbors and far-flung cultural interlocutors. Contributoers: Christian Moser, Birgit Tautz, Silvia Horsch, Eleoma Joshua, Gauti Kristmannsson, Sabine Wilke, Daniela Kramer, Jon Hughes, Thomas Martinec, Margaret Litter, Lyn Marven, Dirk Goettsche, Susanne Kord Eleoma Joshua is Lecturer in German at Edinburgh University. RobertVilain is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. The journal's General Editor is Sarah Colvin, Professor of German at Edinburgh University.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal became famous at the age of sixteen for poetry and lyrical drama of almost uncanny facility and beauty. Yet he ceased to write lyric poetry almost completely in the early 1900s and his fictional farewell to poetry, the so-called 'Chandos Letter', is a paradigm for the uncertainty and instability of Modernism. The verse of the 1890s, the 'lyrical decade', is generally felt to have been enhanced by his interest in the French Symbolists and the Symbolist-inspired tutelage of Stefan George. However, with analyses of verse and prose poetry from the 1890s, this book argues that Symbolism was a fundamentally inhibiting influence, ultimately responsible for the crisis in Hofmannsthal's poetic writing. 'Das Gesprach uber Gedichte', written soon after 'Ein Brief', in 1903, makes it clear how the crisis was a personal one and does not imply the general impossibility of future writing, as is often suggested. As a theory of poetry, it acknowledges the importance of French Symbolism but suggests how it was ultimately a dummy aesthetic that had previously overlaid and stifled Hofmannsthal's own Romantic leanings.

Die Dorfgeschichte im Vormarz kennzeichnet eine Ablehnung der neoklassizistischen " Kunstperiode " zugunsten der von Robert Prutz definierten " Unterhaltungsliteratur ". Das bedeutet die Hinwendung des auktorialen Erzahlers zur Erzahlgegenwart, eine oft autobiographisch ausgerichtete Ortsgebundenheit, " Oralitat " mit gelegentlicher Verwendung von Dialekt und dem durchgangigen Gebrauch " einfacher Formen ". Die Darstellung sentimentalischer Gefuhlsregungen der Dorfbewohner entspricht den demokratischen Bestrebungen der Aufklarung, sie sind Teil ihrer emanzipatorischen Selbstbestimmung. Wahrend in Fruhformen der Dorfgeschichte der Schweiz (Zschokke, Gotthelf) didaktische Aspekte im Vordergrund stehen, sind es im Vormarz, der Kernzeit der Dorfgeschichten, gesellschaftspolitische Anliegen. Nach 1848 degenerierte die Dorfgeschichte durch zunehmend reaktionaren Nationalismus zur " Heimatliteratur ". Ein erneutes Interesse an Dorfgeschichten begann in der DDR in den 1960iger Jahren und erfuhr in der BRD um 1980 eine zunachst nostalgisch gepragte Renaissance, die im Kontext oekologischer Debatten und einer Skepsis gegenuber Formen der Akzeleration an Popularitat gewann.