Heinrich von Kleist
The Ambiguity of Art and the Necessity of Form
Hilda Meldrum Brown
Price: £68.00 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-815895-0
Publication date: 25 June 1998
424 pages, 4 halftones, 216x138 mm
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| Reviews |
| - 'This is well argued; and time and time again, Brown's readings of individual texts are persuasive in their precision and good sense. She has a fine eye for the configuration and interplay of characters./ ... there is much to enjoy in Brown's monograph./ ... time and time again she has marvellous, and marvellously detailed, observations to make on the particularity of individual texts.
Generations of Kleist readers will be in her debt./ Martin Swales, Professor of German, University College London, THES, 28/05/99.' -
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| Description | | -
A study of the range of Kleist's writing, including letters, essays, prose, and drama, and his final masterpiece, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
.
- A substantial approach to Kleistian scholarship, which often suffers from an extreme fragmentation in theory and approach. This study attempts to present a more unified approach to the corpus of Kleist's works, through the observation and application of principles explored in his letters and other occasional writings which have a direct bearing on the works themselves.
- The analysis of Kleist's early letters, in particular, offers a number of new perspectives from which to approach his works.
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This book presents an integrated approach to the literary and non-literary writings of the major German author, Heinrich von Kleist. Analysis of Kleist's early letters, in particular, illuminates the oblique and unique processes by which he became aware of his vocation; simultaneously offering new perspectives from which to approach the works themselves. The discipline of recording observations
based on visits to art galleries and travels through landscapes and towns in Prussia, Saxony, and Franconia stimulated Kleist's imagination, providing sets and scenarios which brought him gradually to an awareness of his innate dramatic talents. On a more theoretical level, he was led to speculate about the problem of illusion in art at the same time as he was wrestling with the epistemological
implications of Kantian philosophy. The negative aspects of illusion which he drew from the latter were complemented by a new-found confidence in his ability as an artist to impart to the 'fragility' of the human condition a degree of fixity through form and structure and the coherence and control associated with verbal devices such as paradox and irony. These principles are shown to operate to
varying degrees in all Kleist's works, and to gain in subtlety and depth, nowhere more than in his final masterpiece, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
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Readership: Scholars and students of German literature, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, drama, and prose narrative.
| Contents |
Note on Translations and Abbreviations
Introduction
1.
The Letters
2.
The Occasional Writings
3.
The Erzählungen
4.
The Dramas
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
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| Authors, editors,
and contributors |
Hilda Meldrum Brown, Fellow, Tutor, and Reader in German, St Hilda's College, Oxford
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