The Erotics of War in German Romanticism

The Erotics of War in German Romanticism
Author: Patricia Anne Simpson
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780838756621

In The Erotics of War in German Romanticism, Patricia Anne Simpson explores the ways early nineteenth-century German philosophers, poets, and artists represent war and erotic desire. The author argues that gender is connected to a larger debate about the construction of the self in relation to a community at a time that this definition is under revision. She analyzes the culture of war as it shapes the bonds of fraternal, familial, and eventually national identity. Simpson defines the erotics of war as discursive attempts to assert the priority of ethical identity and citizenship over individualized desire. The seemingly ancillary problem of female desire emerges not as a marginal issue, but as the focal point of a debate about identity.

Winter US Edition

Winter US Edition
Author: Adam Gopnik
Publisher: House of Anansi
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2011-08-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1770890459

The 2011 CBC Massey Lectures celebrates fifty years with bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik, whose subject is winter -- the season, the space, the cycle. Gopnik takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers, who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. Here we learn how a poem by William Cowper heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to existential questions of God and our place in the world; how the race to the poles marks the human drive to imprint meaning on a blank space. Gopnik’s kaleidoscopic work ends in the present day, when he traverses the underground city in Montreal, pondering the future of Northern culture. A stunningly beautiful meditation buoyed by Gopnik’s trademark gentle wit, Winter is at once an enchanting homage to an idea of a season and a captivating journey through the modern imagination. This deluxe 50th anniversary edition includes full-colour images printed on two 8-page inserts.

Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970-2010

Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970-2010
Author: John David Pizer
Publisher: Camden House
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2011
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1571135170

"This is the first book-length study devoted to modern German "author-as-character" fiction set in the Age of Goethe. It shows for the first time in a sustained manner the powerful hold the Goethezeit continues to exercise on the imagination of many of Germany's leading writers. This inner-German dialogue across the ages provides an important corrective to the dominant critical view that contemporary German-language literature is composed primarily under the sign of both globalization and the influence of mass American culture." -- Book cover.

Witnessing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in German Central Europe

Witnessing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in German Central Europe
Author: L. James
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137313730

Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, this volume argues that although the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars are often understood as laying the foundations for total war, many eyewitnesses continued to draw upon older interpretative frameworks to make sense of the armed struggle and attendant political and social upheaval.

Enlightened War

Enlightened War
Author: Elisabeth Krimmer
Publisher: Camden House
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 1571134956

New essays exploring the relationship between warfare and Enlightenment thought both historically and in the present. Enlightened War investigates the multiple and complex interactions between warfare and Enlightenment thought. Although the Enlightenment is traditionally identified with the ideals of progress, eternal peace, reason, and self-determination, Enlightenment discourse unfolded during a period of prolonged European warfare from the Seven Years' War to the Napoleonic conquest of Europe. The essays in this volume explore the palpable influence of war on eighteenth-century thought and argue for an ideological affinity among war, Enlightenment thought, and its legacy. The essays are interdisciplinary, engaging with history, art history, philosophy, military theory, gender studies, and literature and with historical events and cultural contexts from the early Enlightenment through German Classicism and Romanticism. The volume enriches our understanding of warfare in the eighteenth century and shows how theories and practices of war impacted concepts of subjectivity, national identity, gender, and art. It also sheds light on the contemporary discussion of the legitimacy of violence by juxtaposing theories of war, concepts of revolution, and human rights discourses. Contributors: Johannes Birgfeld, David Colclasure, Sara Eigen Figal, Ute Frevert, Wolf Kittler, Elisabeth Krimmer, Waltraud Maierhofer, Arndt Niebisch, Felix Saure, Galili Shahar, Patricia Anne Simpson, Inge Stephan. Elisabeth Krimmer is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis, and Patricia Anne Simpson is Associate Professor of German Studies at Montana State University.

Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon

Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon
Author: Karen Hagemann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 503
Release: 2015-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316193977

In 2013, Germany celebrated the bicentennial of the so-called Wars of Liberation (1813–15). These wars were the culmination of the Prussian struggle against Napoleon between 1806 and 1815, which occupied a key position in German national historiography and memory. Although these conflicts have been analyzed in thousands of books and articles, much of the focus has been on the military campaigns and alliances. Karen Hagemann argues that we cannot achieve a comprehensive understanding of these wars and their importance in collective memory without recognizing how the interaction of politics, culture, and gender influenced these historical events and continue to shape later recollections of them. She thus explores the highly contested discourses and symbolic practices by which individuals and groups interpreted these wars and made political claims, beginning with the period itself and ending with the centenary in 1913.

Women Warriors in Romantic Drama

Women Warriors in Romantic Drama
Author: Wendy C. Nielsen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611494303

Women Warriors in Romantic Drama advances scholarship on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theater by bringing together, for the first time, female and male dramatists as well as British, German, Irish, and French writers, thinkers, actors, and philosophers. This transnational perspective allows Women Warriors in Romantic Drama to make the provocative claim that in some instances, the violence of the French Revolution--and especially women's participation in it--advances proto-feminist concerns.

Stormtrooper Families

Stormtrooper Families
Author: Andrew Wackerfuss
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1939594065

Based on extensive archival work, Stormtrooper Families combines stormtrooper personnel records, Nazi Party autobiographies, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, court records, and police-surveillance records to paint a picture of the stormtrooper movement as an organic product of its local community, its web of interpersonal relationships, and its intensely emotional internal struggles. Extensive analysis of Nazi-era media across the political spectrum shows how the public debate over homosexuality proved just as important to political outcomes as did the actual presence of homosexuals in fascist and antifascist politics. As children in the late-imperial period, the stormtroopers witnessed the first German debates over homosexuality and political life. As young adults, they verbally and physically battled over these definitions, bringing conflicts over homosexuality and masculinity into the center of Weimar Germany's most important political debates. Stormtrooper Families chronicles the stormtroopers' personal, political, and sexual struggles to explain not only how individual gay men existed within the Nazi movement but also how the public meaning of homosexuality affected fascist and antifascist politics—a public controversy still alive today.

Cultures of Violence in the New German Street

Cultures of Violence in the New German Street
Author: Patricia Anne Simpson
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2011-11-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1611474566

In post-Wall Germany, violence—both real and imagined—is increasingly determining the formation of new cultural identities. Patricia Anne Simpson’s book focuses on the representation of violence in three youth subcultures often characterized by aggression as they enact a rivalry for supremacy on the new German “street”—the author’s operative metaphor to situate the cultural discourse about violence. The selected literary texts, films, and music exemplify the urgent need for a sustained debate about violence as an aspect of both social reality and the national imaginary. Simpson’s study discloses the relationship between narratives of violence and issues of immigration, ethnic difference, and poverty. Her lucid readings examine the ways in which violence is grounded in the asphalt of Germany’s new street. This interdisciplinary study identifies the motivations, decisions, and consequences of violent acts and the stories that convey them. Simpson draws examples from popular genres and subcultures, including punk, hip hop, and skinhead sounds, styles, and politics. With theoretical sophistication and analytical clarity, the author locates the contested territory of the street within larger European contexts of violence while paying careful attention to the particularities of German history. She reveals new insights into the construction of citizenship, masculinity, and contemporary ethics. In addition, Simpson demonstrates the importance of concepts embedded in the representation of violence, including revised definitions of heroism, community, and evolving ideas of fraternity, family, and home.

Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe

Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe
Author: Elisabeth Krimmer
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 1571135618

Investigates how culture in the Age of Goethe shaped and was shaped by a sustained and multifaceted debate about the place of religion in politics, philosophy, and culture. The eighteenth century is usually considered to be a time of increasing secularization in which the primacy of theology was replaced by the authority of reason, yet this lofty intellectual endeavor played itself out in a social and political reality that was heavily impacted by religious customs and institutions. This duality is visible in the literature and culture of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany. On the one hand, authors such asGoethe, Schiller, and Kleist are known for their distance from traditional Christianity. On the other hand, many canonical texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries -- from Goethe's Faust to Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans to Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas -- are not only filled with references to the Bible, but invoke religious frameworks. Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe investigates how culture in the Age of Goethe shaped and was shaped by a sustained and multifaceted debate about the place of religion and religious difference in politics, philosophy, and culture, enriching our understanding of the relationship between religion and culture during this foundational period in German history. Contributors: Frederick Amrine, Claire Baldwin, Lisa Beesley, Jane K. Brown, Jeffrey L. High, Elisabeth Krimmer, Helmut J. Schneider, Patricia Anne Simpson, John H. Smith, Tom Spencer. Elisabeth Krimmer is professor of German at the University of California, Davis. Patricia Anne Simpson is professor of German at Montana State University.