
A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin
Rolf J. Goebel(Editor)
Camden House Inc (Publisher)
Published on 1. October 2009
Book
Hardback
328 pages
978-1-57113-367-0 (ISBN)
Description
An advanced introduction to Benjamin's work and its actualization for our own times.
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) has emerged as one of the leading cultural critics of the twentieth century. His work encompasses aesthetics, metaphysical language and narrative theories, German literary history, philosophies of history, the intersection of Marxism and Messianic thought, urban topography, and the development of photography and film. Benjamin defined the task of the critic as one that blasts endangered moments of the past out of the continuum of history so that they attain new significance. This volume of new essays employs this principle of actualization as its methodological program in offering a new advanced introduction to Benjamin's own work. The essays analyze Benjamin's central texts, themes, terminologies, and genres in their original contexts while simultaneously situating them in new parameters, such as contemporary media, memory culture, constructions of gender, postcoloniality, and theories of urban topographies. The Companion brings together an international group of established and emerging scholars to explicate Benjamin's actuality from a multidisciplinary perspective. Designed for audiences interested in literary criticism, cultural studies, and neighboring disciplines, the volume serves as a stimulus for new debates about Benjamin's intellectual legacy today.
Contributors: Wolfgang Bock, Willi Bolle, Dianne Chisholm, Adrian Daub, Dominik Finkelde, Eric Jarosinski, Lutz Koepnick, Vivian Liska, Karl Ivan Solibakke, Marc de Wilde, Bernd Witte
Rolf J. Goebel is Distinguished Professor of German and Chair of the Department of WorldLanguages and Cultures at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) has emerged as one of the leading cultural critics of the twentieth century. His work encompasses aesthetics, metaphysical language and narrative theories, German literary history, philosophies of history, the intersection of Marxism and Messianic thought, urban topography, and the development of photography and film. Benjamin defined the task of the critic as one that blasts endangered moments of the past out of the continuum of history so that they attain new significance. This volume of new essays employs this principle of actualization as its methodological program in offering a new advanced introduction to Benjamin's own work. The essays analyze Benjamin's central texts, themes, terminologies, and genres in their original contexts while simultaneously situating them in new parameters, such as contemporary media, memory culture, constructions of gender, postcoloniality, and theories of urban topographies. The Companion brings together an international group of established and emerging scholars to explicate Benjamin's actuality from a multidisciplinary perspective. Designed for audiences interested in literary criticism, cultural studies, and neighboring disciplines, the volume serves as a stimulus for new debates about Benjamin's intellectual legacy today.
Contributors: Wolfgang Bock, Willi Bolle, Dianne Chisholm, Adrian Daub, Dominik Finkelde, Eric Jarosinski, Lutz Koepnick, Vivian Liska, Karl Ivan Solibakke, Marc de Wilde, Bernd Witte
Rolf J. Goebel is Distinguished Professor of German and Chair of the Department of WorldLanguages and Cultures at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Reviews / Votes
[A] valuable, very readable and often stimulating companion and a real asset to contemporary discussion in the field. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW * Taken as a whole, this collection offers us, rather than a 'Marxist' Benjamin or a 'messianic' Benjamin, what could be called a 'digital Benjamin. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES * The authors of the essays in this book do an excellent job of balancing their subjects. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW * This book will stand well among the many essay collections attesting to Benjamin's rich intellectual legacy and to the broad, intense appeal of his work across disciplines as varied, and interrelated, as cultural studies, literature, geography, gender studies, and media studies. * CHOICE * Goebel presents a wonderful collection of essays that deal with Benjamin's most fundamental concepts on language, rhetoric, translation, fragmentation, montage, messianism, politics, and phantasmagoria. Many of these interdisciplinary essays 're-read' his works against the background of current theoretical conceptualizations (media theory, gender studies, postcolonialism) . . . . [E]xcellent . . . . * GERMAN QUARTERLY *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Columbia, MD
United States
Publishing group
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
8 black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
688 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-57113-367-0 (9781571133670)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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Rolf J. Goebel
A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin
Book
08/2016
Camden House Inc
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Rolf J. Goebel
A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin
E-Book
10/2009
1st Edition
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Persons
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Distinguished Professor of German, Emeritus, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. KARL IVAN SOLIBAKKE is Associate Professor of German and Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for Budget and Long-Range Planning at Syracuse University.
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Customer
Contributions
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Royalty Account
Royalty Account
Content
Benjamin's Criticism of Language and Literature - Wolfgang Bock
The Presence of the Baroque: Benjamin's Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels in Contemporary Contexts - Dominik Finkelde
Lost Orders of the Day: Benjamin's Einbahnstrasse - Wolfgang Bock
Literature as the Medium of Collective Memory: Reading Benjamin's Einbahnstrasse, "Der Erzaehler," and "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" - Bernd Witte
Benjamin in the Age of New Media - Lutz Koepnick
One Little Rule: On Benjamin, Autobiography, and Never Using the Word "I" - Eric Jarosinski
The Passagen-Werk Revisited: The Dialectics of Fragmentation and Reconfiguration in Urban Modernity - Karl Ivan Solibakke
Benjamin's Politics of Remembrance: A Reading of the Theses Contained in "UEber den Begriff der Geschichte" - Marc de Wilde
The Legacy of Benjamin's Messianism: Giorgio Agamben and other Contenders - Vivian Liska
Paris on the Amazon?: Postcolonial Interrogations of Benjamin's European Modernism - Willi Bolle
Benjamin's Gender, Sex, and Eros - Dianne Chisholm
Sonic Dreamworlds: Benjamin, Adorno, and the Phantasmagoria of the Opera House - Adrian Daub
The Presence of the Baroque: Benjamin's Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels in Contemporary Contexts - Dominik Finkelde
Lost Orders of the Day: Benjamin's Einbahnstrasse - Wolfgang Bock
Literature as the Medium of Collective Memory: Reading Benjamin's Einbahnstrasse, "Der Erzaehler," and "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" - Bernd Witte
Benjamin in the Age of New Media - Lutz Koepnick
One Little Rule: On Benjamin, Autobiography, and Never Using the Word "I" - Eric Jarosinski
The Passagen-Werk Revisited: The Dialectics of Fragmentation and Reconfiguration in Urban Modernity - Karl Ivan Solibakke
Benjamin's Politics of Remembrance: A Reading of the Theses Contained in "UEber den Begriff der Geschichte" - Marc de Wilde
The Legacy of Benjamin's Messianism: Giorgio Agamben and other Contenders - Vivian Liska
Paris on the Amazon?: Postcolonial Interrogations of Benjamin's European Modernism - Willi Bolle
Benjamin's Gender, Sex, and Eros - Dianne Chisholm
Sonic Dreamworlds: Benjamin, Adorno, and the Phantasmagoria of the Opera House - Adrian Daub