Studies by notable literary critic and translator Alexander Stillmark comparing Hofmannsthal's best works with Novalis, Yeats, Chekhov, and Oscar Wilde. The book takes up Hofmannsthal's views of German romanticism, lyrical dram, and how these various discussed texts ushered in the age of modern literature.

The Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was one of the great modernists in the German language, but his importance as a major intellectual of the early twentieth century has not received adequate attention in the English-speaking world. One distinguished literary scholar of his generation called Hofmannsthal a "spiritual-moral authority" of a kind German culture had only rarely produced. This volume provides translations of essays that deal with the Austrian idea and with the distinctive position of German-speaking Austrians between German nationalism and peoples to the East, whether in the Habsburg Monarchy or beyond it, as well as essays that locate Hofmannsthal's thinking about Austria in relation to the broader situation of German and European culture.

The Viennese poet, dramatist, and prose writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was among the most celebrated men of letters in the German language at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. His early poems established his reputation as the `child prodigy' of German letters, and a few remain among the most anthologized in the German language. His early lyric dramas prompted no less a judge than T. S. Eliot to pronounce him, along with Yeats and Claudel, one of the three European writers who had done the most to revive verse drama in modern times. His critical essays attest to the subtle powers of discrimination that marked him as one of the most discerning literary critics of the day. And yet he underwent a crisis of cognition and language around 1900, and from then on turned away from poetry and lyric drama almost entirely, concentrating instead on more public forms of drama such as the libretti for Richard Strauss's operas, the plays written for the Salzburg Festival (of which he was a co-founder), and on discursive and narrative prose. The body of work that Hofmannsthal left behind at his premature death is matched in its variety, breadth, and quality by that of only a handful of German writers. And yet posterity has not been kind to his reputation: those who admired the early work for its aesthetic refinement disdained his turn to more popular forms, whereas many of those who might have been receptive to the more committed and public stance of his later work were put off by his conservative politics. This volume of new essays by top Hofmannsthal scholars re-examines his extraordinarily rich and complex body of work, assessing his stature in German and world literature in the new century. Contributors: Katherine Arens, Judith Beniston, Benjamin Bennett, Nina Berman, Joanna Bottenberg, Douglas A. Joyce, Thomas A. Kovach, Ellen Ritter, Hinrich C. Seeba, Andreas Thomasberger, W. Edgar Yates. Professor Thomas Kovach is Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona.

This book focuses on Hugo von Hofmannsthal's intense, lifelong concentration upon a single cohesive set of poetic, philosophical and ethical concerns, a quality of his work which has been neglected in the bulk of existing scholarship. Professor Bennett examines Hofmannsthal's work in the context of literary theory and the history of philosophy, referring especially to Nietzsche, German Idealism and the poetics of German Classicism. He identifies three principal areas of concern to Hofmannsthal: the theory of genre, the question of the role of literature in society and the search for a fruitful response to the problem of the historical development of culture. The argument proceeds by way of detailed interpretation of texts, including Der Tor und der Tod, the Chandos letter, Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Schwierige, Das Salzburger Grosse Welttheater and Der Turm.

Hermann Broch (1886-1951) is remembered among English-speaking readers for his novels The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil, and among German-speaking readers for his novels as well as his works on moral and political philosophy, his aesthetic theory, and his varied criticism. This study reveals Broch as a major historian as well, one who believes that true historical understanding requires the faculties of both poet and philosopher. Through an analysis of the changing thought and career of the Austrian poet, librettist, and essaist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Broch attempts to define and analyze the major intellectual issues of the European fin de siècle, a period that he characterizes according to the Nietzschean concepts of the breakdown of rationality and the loss of a central value system. The result is a major examination of European thought as well as a comparative study of political systems and artistic styles.