"Sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German."

Hermann Böschenstein, born in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland in 1900, did his doctorate in Rostock under Emil Utziz and came to Canada in the 1920's, first as a tourist and then as a permanent immigrant. He spent over fifty years in Canada as a teacher and scholar, becoming Head of the University of Toronto's Department of German and one of Canada's leading Germanists. Among his many publications on German Literature his two-volume Deutsche Gefühlskultur (1954 and 1966) remains an unique attempt to chart the development of feeling as expressed in German Literature since the Enlightenment. This present volume gathers together his essays in English on German Literature which demonstrate his life-long endeavour to seek out and promote those humanistic values that are embodied in great literature.

The most prolific historian of early modern German literature in the twentieth century, Klaus Garber has largely remained unknown to English-language scholars. The seven essays selected here are translated into English for the first time and represent the ’essence’ of Garber’s work. Central to Garber’s outlook is a break with the traditional canonization of culture into national categories. Moreover, he argues that literary history consists not only of intellectual history, but also political and social history. As he states in his preface to this volume: ’To bring Old Europe to life in all the variety of its cultural landscapes; to hear across space and time the voices that praised this multiplicity as a valuable possession; to be inspired by the past to respond to our own needs - these tasks constitute the noblest goal of early modern literary studies today.’

'A New History of German Literature' offers some 200 essays on events in German literary history.

Important essays from one of the giants of literary criticism, including a dozen published here in English for the first time Erich Auerbach (1892-1957), best known for his classic literary study Mimesis, is celebrated today as a founder of comparative literature, a forerunner of secular criticism, and a prophet of global literary studies. Yet the true depth of Auerbach's thinking and writing remains unplumbed. Time, History, and Literature presents a wide selection of Auerbach's essays, many of which are little known outside the German-speaking world. Of the twenty essays culled for this volume from the full length of his career, twelve have never appeared in English before, and one is being published for the first time. Foregrounded in this major new collection are Auerbach's complex relationship to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, his philosophy of time and history, and his theory of human ethics and responsible action. Auerbach effectively charts out the difficult discovery, in the wake of Christianity, of the sensuous, the earthly, and the human and social worlds. A number of the essays reflect Auerbach's responses to an increasingly hostile National Socialist environment. These writings offer a challenging model of intellectual engagement, one that remains as compelling today as it was in Auerbach's own time.