Thinking Through German Literature with Andrew Jaszi

A Foundational Approach Applied to Goethe and Kafka
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64014-218-3
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 250, 272 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 535 g

Reihe: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Brings to light an important and unconventional teacher of literature whose way of thinking and method are relevant in German Studies and beyond, particularly in view of the present crisis of the humanities.

At a time when enrollment in the humanities is said to be in "free fall" (Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 2/27/2023), the figure of Andrew Jaszi offers an alternative vision of what a literary education might look like. Jaszi was a Hungarian-born philosopher and literary scholar in the German Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1948 to 1985. His accessible, jargon-free approach, a method he developed through analogy with Goethe's unique way of doing science, attracted students of diverse backgrounds and majors to his classes, while also winning acclaim from colleagues who compared him to Wittgenstein and Buber.

Drawing on a set of previously unknown tape recordings of Jaszi's seminars, this book offers readers the opportunity to witness this legendary teacher in action. The book's immediate benefit is the illumination provided by Jaszi's original interpretations of Goethe's Faust and Kafka's "The Judgment." More broadly, it illustrates the transformative, whole-self education Jaszi advocated and himself embodied, one that runs counter to the technocratic imperatives of our time. Ultimately, the book's goal is to make better known an important literary thinker and an unconventional teacher of German Studies, the value of whose work extends beyond a single discipline to humanities education in general, with special bearing on its present crisis and potential future.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ralston, Kenneth M

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Allgemeine Didaktik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Teaching as an Existential Art - Bifurcations - The University in Space and Time - The Janitor-King of Dwinelle Hall

1. Approaching Goethe
Who was Goethe? - A Goethean Approach to Science, Literature, and Life -Reflections, Refractions. and a Bit of Philosophy
2. The Faust Drama. Overview and Part I
Locating Faust - Between Farrago and Form - Broadly Speaking - The Problem of Knowledge and Magic - Naïve Magic - Deliberate Magic -Goethe's Creation Myth and its Relevance to Faust - The Wager Scene
3. Faust, Part II
Three Paths: Magic, Symbolism, Mysticism - Moving Through Part II - A Fourth Path - The Perils of Magic - Looking into Darkness - The Step Beyond Magic - Blindness or Insight - Faust's "Highest Moment" - Errancy and Truth -Higher Spheres - Christianization and its Discontents - Reservations, Problems, Questions - "There's a certain Slant of light." - Epilogue
4. An Introduction to the Study of Franz Kafka
Approaching Kafka-Where Does Kafka Belong?
5. "Hurrying Is Deadly": A Slow Reading of Kafka's "The Judgment"

Postscript
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ralston, Kenneth M
KENNETH M. RALSTON holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at the Schule Schloss Salem, Germany, and at the French American International School, San Francisco.