Heinrich Von Kleist and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Violence, Identity, Nation
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-1-57113-554-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 128, 248 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 522 g

Reihe: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

By reconsidering Kleist's reception of Rousseau and placing it in historical context, this book sheds new light on a range of political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work.

Heinrich von Kleist is renowned as an author who posed a radical challenge to the orthodoxies of his age. Today, his works are frequently seen to relentlessly deconstruct the paradigms of Idealism and to reflect a Romantic, even postmodern, perspective on the ambiguities of the world. Such a view fails, however, to do full justice to the more complex manner in which Kleist articulates the tensions between the securities of Enlightenment thought and the anxieties of the revolutionary age.
Steven Howe offers a new angle on Kleist's dialogue with the Enlightenment by reconsidering his investment in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Where previous critics have trivialized this as intense but fleeting and born of personal identification, Howe here establishes Rousseau's importance as a lasting source of inspiration for the violent constellations of Kleist's fiction. Taking account of both Rousseau'scritique of modernity and his later propositions for working toward the Enlightenment promise of emancipation, the book locates a mode of discourse which, placed in the historical context of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, sheds new light on the political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work.

Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is co-editor, with Ricarda Schmidt and Seán Allan, of Heinrich von Kleist: Konstruktive und Destruktive Funktionen von Gewalt (forthcoming, 2012).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Howe, Steven

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Einzelne Autoren: Monographien & Biographien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen Französische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Interpreting Kleist's Paradoxes
Kleist, Rousseau, and the Paradoxes of Enlightenment
Das Erdbeben in Chili
Die Verlobung in St. Domingo
Die Herrmannsschlacht
Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Howe, Steven
STEVEN HOWE is Lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of Lucerne, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies.

Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is co-editor, with Ricarda Schmidt and Seán Allan, of Heinrich von Kleist: Konstruktive und Destruktive Funktionen von Gewalt (forthcoming, 2012).