New, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thinker of the European Enlightenment. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is one of the great names of the classical age of German literature. One of the last universalists, he wrote on aesthetics, literary history and theory, historiography, anthropology, psychology,education, and theology; translated and adapted poetry from ancient Greek, English, Italian, even from Persian and Arabic; collected folk songs from around the world; and pioneered a better understanding of non-European cultures.A student of Kant's, he became Goethe's mentor in Strasbourg, and was a mastermind of the Sturm und Drang and a luminary of classical Weimar. But the wide range of Herder's interests and writings, along with his unorthodox ways of seeing things, seems to have prevented him being fully appreciated for any of them. His image has also been clouded by association with political ideologies, the proponents of which ignored the message of Humanitat in histexts. So although Herder is acknowledged by scholars to be one of the great thinkers of European Enlightenment, there is no up-to-date, comprehensive introduction to his works in English, a lacuna this book fills with seventeennew, specially commissioned essays. Contributors: Hans Adler, Wulf Koepke, Steven Martinson, Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont, John Zammito, Jurgen Trabant, Stefan Greif, Ulrich Gaier, Karl Menges, Christoph Bultmann, Martin Kessler, Arnd Bohm, Gerhard Sauder, Robert E. Norton, Harro Muller-Michaels, Gunter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernest A. Menze. Hans Adler is Halls-Bascom Professor of Modern Literature Studies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison. Wulf Koepke is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German, Texas A&M University and recipient of the Medal of the International J. G. Herder Society.

A volume of carefully focused essays illuminating the works of one of the leading 20th-century German writers. Alfred Doeblin (1878-1957) was one of the great German-Jewish writers of the 20th century, a major figure in the German avant-garde before the First World War and a leading intellectual during the Weimar Republic. Doeblin greatly influenced the history of the German novel: his best-known work, the best-selling 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, has frequently been compared in its use of internal monologue and literary montage to James Joyce's Ulysses and John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer . Doeblin's oeuvre is by no means limited to novels, but in this genre, he offered a surprising variety of narrative techniques, themes, structures, and outlooks. Doeblin's impact on German writers after the Second World War was considerable: Gunter Grass, for example, acknowledged him as "my teacher." And yet, while Alexanderplatz continues to fascinate the reading public, it has overshadowed therest of Doeblin's immense oeuvre. This volume of carefully focused essays seeks to do justice to such important texts as Doeblin's early stories, his numerous other novels, his political, philosophical, medical, autobiographical, and religious essays, his experimental plays, and his writings on the new media of cinema and radio. Contributors: Heidi Thomann Tewarson, David Dollenmayer, Neil H. Donahue, Roland Dollinger, Veronika Fuechtner, Gabriele Sander, Erich Kleinschmidt, Wulf Koepke, Helmut F. Pfanner, Helmuth Kiesel, Klaus Muller-Salget, Christoph Bartscherer, Wolfgang Dusing. Roland Dollinger is Associate Professor of German at Sarah Lawrence College; Wulf Koepke is Professor Emeritus of German at Texas A&M University; Heidi Thomann Tewarson is Professor of German at Oberlin College.

The first thorough study in English of the reception of Doeblin's novels, written by one of the foremost Doeblin scholars. Alfred Doeblin (1878-1957) is one of the major German writers of the twentieth century. His experimental, ever-changing, avant-garde style kept both readers and critics off guard, and although he won the acclaim of critics and hada clear impact on German writers after the Second World War (Gunter Grass called him "my teacher"), he is still largely unknown to the reading public, and under-researched by literary scholars. He was a prolific writer, with thirteen novels alongside a great many other shorter fiction works and non-fiction writings to his credit, and yet, paradoxically, he is known to a larger public as the author of only one book, the 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, which sold more copies in the first weeks of publication than all his previous novels combined. Alexanderplatz is known for its depiction of the criminal underground of Berlin and a montage and stream-of-consciousness technique comparable to James Joyce's Ulysses; it became one of the best-known big-city novels of the century and has remained Doeblin's one enduring popular success. Doeblin was forced into exile in 1933, and the works he wrote in exile were neglected by critics for decades. Now epic works like Amazonas, November 1918, and Hamlet, Oder die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende are finding a fairer critical evaluation. Wulf Koepke tackles the paradox of Doeblin the leading but neglected avant-gardist by analysis of contemporary and later criticism, both journalistic and academic, always taking into account the historical context in which it appeared. Wulf Koepke is Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University.