In this study the extent to which Wieland contributed to the literary genre of the travesty is established, the poet's approach to his sources as well as the nature and duality of his innovations are investigated, and the level and distribution of his travesties in relationship to the sum total of his literary work in general is appraised.

In this study the extent to which Wieland contributed to the literary genre of the travesty is established, the poet's approach to his sources as well as the nature and duality of his innovations are investigated, and the level and distribution of his travesties in relationship to the sum total of his literary work in general is appraised.

Renowned music historian Philipp Spitta has written that “of all the German musicians of the 19th century, none has exercised a greater influence over his own generation and that succeeding it than Weber.” Spitta’s statement reflects Weber’s popularity at the end of the nineteenth 19th century—both for his place as a foundational figure of German Romantic opera and for his role in the early German Nationalist movement in music. Indeed, Weber’s Der Freischütz is still considered the first German Romantic opera, enjoying a place of privilege in the modern operatic repertoire with performances held the world over and at least two cinematic productions. Despite its enormous popularity throughout the 19th nineteenth century, however, Weber’s swan song, Oberon, has remained separate from the mainstream thrust of our modern understanding of German Romantic opera. In Carl Maria von Weber: Oberon and the Cosmopolitanism in the Early German Romantic, music historian and theorist Joseph E. Morgan reassesses Weber’s work and aesthetics not just for their influence but also as an expression of the aesthetics and cosmopolitanism that underlay the early Romantic and Nationalist movement in Germany. In a discussion with analyses that features nearly one- hundred musical examples, Morgan tracks the development of Weber’s musical style across his career. The investigation culminates with Weber’s last and long-misunderstood work, explaining its thematic and harmonic organization, its stylistic idiosyncrasies, and the tenuous place that it holds on the margins of the operatic canon. The discussion is enhanced and corroborated by frequent attention to correlating developments in other art from the period, including painting, poetry, and literature. This text will be of interest to students, scholars, and connoisseurs wishing to acquire a new insight on the performance, reception, and aesthetics of early German Romantic opera. Further, because of the interdisciplinary nature of the investigation, anyone researching the early Romantic and Nationalist movement in Germany will also certainly find valuable insights in this book.

Franz Kafka is among the most significant 20th century voices to examine the absurdity and terror posed for the individual by what his contemporary Max Weber termed 'the iron cage' of society. Ferdinand Tsnnies had defined the problem of finding community within society for Kafka and his peers in his 1887 book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Kafka took up this issue by focusing upon the 'social discourse' of human relationships. In this book, Mark E. Blum examines Kafka's three novels, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle in their exploration of how community is formed or eroded in the interpersonal relations of its protagonists. Critical literature has recognized Kafka's ability to narrate the gestural moment of alienation or communion. This 'social discourse' was augmented, however, by a dimension virtually no commentator has recognized-Kafka's conversation with past and present authors. Kafka encoded authors and their texts representing every century of the evolution of modernism and its societal problems, from Bunyan and DeFoe, through Pope and Lessing, to Fontane and Thomas Mann. The inter-textual conversation Kafka conducted can enable us to appreciate the profound human problem of realizing community within society. Cultural historians as well as literary critics will be enriched by the evidence of these encoded cultural conversations. Kafka's 'Imperial Messenger' may finally be heard in the full history of his emanations. Kafka encoded not only past authors, but painters as well. Kafka had been known as a graphic artist in his youth, and was informed by expressionism and cubism as he matured. Kafka's encodings of literature as well as fine art are not solely of the work to which he refers, but the community of authors or painters and their success or failure of community. Kafka's encodings were meant as an extra-textual readings for astute readers, but also as a lesson to his fellow authors whom he held accountable in his correspondence as cultural messengers. Encoding had been a Germanic literary norm since the sixteenth century. Many of Kafka's encodings are of Austrian satirists since the eighteenth century, among them Franz Christoph von Scheyb and Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener, Josef Schreyvogel, as well as the genial irony of Franz Grillparzer. Austrian literature is prominent, but Kafka's encodings are drawn from all Western literature from Plato through his own present. In The Castle the figure of Momus becomes a major index in the history of Western literature, extended from Plato through Lucian, to Nicolaus Gerbel through Goethe. Momus, the arch-critic of manners, morals, and judge of human character, enables a Kafka reader to use this thread to comprehend the errors of commission and omission in the social discourse of his protagonists throughout his opus.