Georg Lukács was one of the most controversial Marxist philosophers of this century. In this book, however, he appears in another guise: as a literary historian in the tradition of Sainte-Beuve and Belinsky, offering an advanced introduction to one of the richest periods of European literature. These previously untranslated essays - on Heinrich von Kleist, Joseph Eichendorff, Georg Büchner, Heinrich Heine, Gottfried Keller, Wilhelm Raabe, and Theodor Fontane - were written between 1936 and 1950. They illuminate Lukács's enduring love of German literature and his faith in the humanist tradition. In all of them, moreover, he can be seen actively intervening in the cultural debates of the time - on the role of literature, on the literary tradition in society, and on the relationship between literature and politics. Although his defense of realism against the crudities of socialist realism is implicit throughout these essays, Lukács's main purpose was to illuminate the intellectual, historical, and literary context in which these great writers worked, to attain a fuller understanding of what they wrote, and also to settle accounts with contemporary German critics who were attempting to create a fascist pantheon.

German Realists in the Nineteenth Century

Georg Lukács

Livingstone, Rodney

Gaines, Jeremy

Keast, Paul

History

Mit Pr

Originally published in German in 1931 and in an expurgated English translation in 1932, this novel is the tale of Jacob Fabian, a Berlin advertising copywriter doomed in the context of economic, ethical, and political collapse by his characteristic mixture of detachment and decency. Fabian is a middle-of-the-road liberal, an Enlightenment rationalist, a believer that the public condition reflects prevailing private moralities, and a skeptic toward all ideological nostrums. Richly detailed and vividly plotted, Fabian remains an unparalleled personalization of the collapse of the Weimar Republic. This new edition restores the deleted sections considered too explicit for the original publication. It also includes Kastner's epilogue, which had been rejected by the original publisher, the preface added by the author to the 1952 German reissue, and an informative foreword by the scholar Rodney Livingstone.

Fabian: The Story of a Moralist (European Classics)

Erich Kästner

Brooks, Cyrus

Literature & Fiction

Northwestern Univ Pr

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Books by Livingstone, Rodney