These essays offer a wide range of topics treated from literary, interdisciplinary, and comparative points of view. The book falls into three sections: Weimar and Goethe; Weimar and German Literary Culture; Weimar Abroad; with a closure on Weimar and the Political Aftermath.

New essays providing an account of the shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values of Weimar Classicism.

This book is a study of central aspects of Weimar Classicism, written in the light of Ernst Cassirer's cultural theory. It provides a close reading of key texts, ranging across Goethe and Schiller's oeuvre as a whole, from their (philosophical) poems through their drama, prose-writing, and theoretical reflections on cultural and scientific topics. The work seeks to demonstrate the attested (but hitherto largely unanalysed) aesthetic power at the very heart of their writings, which in turn underpins their epistemological and ethical significance. The main theme of Weimar Classicism is the role of symbolism in Classicism, as distinct from the centrality of semiosis in competing cultural norms. The overall aim of the book is thus to see Weimar Classicism anew, both historically and analytically, as an enlightening context in which to reconsider many of the central tenets of contemporary (often called 'postmodern') cultural theory.

"The book provides an overview of related scholarly literature; discusses Nietzsche's aesthetic theory in The Birth of Tragedy; recounts the composition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and offers an interpretation of the "aesthetic gospel" in this centeal work. A concluding chapter explores the continuities in aesthetic theory from Leucippus to Ernst Cassirer. By demonstrating the constitutive function of the aesthetics of Weimar classicism in his philosophy, this book opens up a fresh and original perspective on reading Nietzsche."--BOOK JACKET.

Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867) earned his place in literary history as a perceptive diarist from 1811 onwards. Drawing substantially on hitherto unpublished manuscript sources, this book discusses his formal and informal engagement with a wide variety of English and European literature prior to this point. Robinson emerges as a pioneering literary critic whose unique philosophical erudition underpinned his activity as a cross-cultural disseminator of literature during the early Romantic period. A Dissenter barred from the English universities, Robinson educated himself thoroughly during his teenage years and began to publish in radical journals. Godwin's philosophy subsequently inspired his first theory of literature. When in Germany from 1800 to 1805, he became the leading British scholar of Kant, whose philosophy informed his discussions of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and August Wilhelm Schlegel. After his return to London, Robinson aided Hazlitt's understanding of Kant and, thus, Hazlitt's early career as a writer. His distinctive comparative criticism further enabled him to draw compelling parallels between Wordsworth, Blake, and Herder, and to discern 'moral excellence' in Christian Leberecht Heyne's Amathonte. This also prompted Robinson's transmission of Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul in 1811, as well as a profound exchange of ideas with Coleridge. In this new study, Philipp Hunnekuhl finds that Robinson's ingenious adaptation of Kantian aesthetic autonomy into a revolutionary theory of literature's moral relevance anticipated the current 'ethical turn' in literary studies.

Since Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theorization around the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of the unconscious has exerted an enormous influence upon psychoanalysis and psychology, and literary, critical and social theory. Yet, prior to Freud, the concept of the unconscious already possessed a complex genealogy in nineteenth-century German philosophy and literature, beginning with the aftermath of Kant's critical philosophy and the origins of German idealism, and extending into the discourses of romanticism and beyond. Despite the many key thinkers who contributed to the Germanic discourses on the unconscious, the English-speaking world remains comparatively unaware of this heritage and its influence upon the origins of psychoanalysis. Bringing together a collection of experts in the fields of German Studies, Continental Philosophy, the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Psychoanalysis, this volume examines the various theorizations, representations, and transformations undergone by the concept of the unconscious in nineteenth-century German thought.

"The two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was celebrated in Scotland by a colloquium held under the auspices of the University of Glasgow's Centre for Intercultural Germanistics in April 1999. Its aim was to reflect both Goethe's own commitment to Weltliteratur and the pressing need in our global village at the turn of the millennium for cultural exchange between scholars of different nations. For if, as Goethe said, 'wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weis nichts von seiner eigenen', then it is also true that 'wer fremde Kulturen nicht kennt; weis nichts von seiner eigenen'.Discussing different themes, different texts, and working with different methodological presuppositions, the papers in this collection nevertheless share the conviction that the significance of Goethe for the new millennium can best be shown by setting his works in an intercultural context. The volume also includes John Michael Krois' Inaugural Ernst Cassirer Lecture in Intercultural Relations, held in the University of Glasgow in April 2000, entitled 'Ernst Cassirer and the Renaissance of Cultural Theory'."