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Edinburgh German Yearbook 12: Repopulating the Eighteenth Century: Second-Tier Writing in the German Enlightenment

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In essays that examine particular non-canonical works and writers in their wider cultural context, this volume "repopulates" the German Enlightenment.



German literature and thought flourished in the eighteenth century, when a culture considered a European backwater came to assert worldwide significance. This was an age in which repeated attempts to reform German literary and philosophical culture were made - often only to be overtaken within a few decades. It ushered in generations of exceptionally gifted poets and thinkers including Klopstock, Lessing, Goethe, Kant, and Schiller, whose names still dominate our understanding of the German Enlightenment. Yet the period also brought with it new means of accessing and disseminating culture and a rapid increase in cultural production. The leading lights of eighteenth-century German culture operated against the backdrop of a yet more diverse and vivid cast of literary and philosophical figures since consigned to the second tier of German culture. Through essays that examine particular non-canonical works and writers in their wider cultural context, this collection repopulates the German Enlightenment with these largely forgotten movements, writers, and literary circles. It offers new insights into the development of genres such as thenovel, the fable, and the historical drama, and assesses the dynamics that led to individual authors, circles, and schools of thought being left behind in their time and passed over or inadequately understood to this day.

Johannes Birgfeld, Stephanie Blum, Julia Bohnengel, Kristin Eichhorn, Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge, Jonathan Blake Fine, J. C. Lees, Leonard von Morzé, Ellen Pilsworth, Joanna Raisbeck, Ritchie Robertson, Michael Wood.

Michael Wood is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in German at the University of Edinburgh. Johannes Birgfeld teaches Modern German Literature at the University of the Saarland.

244 pages, Hardcover

Published November 29, 2018

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About the author

Michael Wood

240 books361 followers
Librarian Note: There's more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Michael David Wood is an English historian & broadcaster. He's presented numerous tv documentary series. Library of Congress lists him as Michael Wood.

Wood was born in Moston, Manchester, & educated at Manchester Grammar School & Oriel College, Oxford. His special interest was Anglo-Saxon history. In the 70s Wood worked for the BBC in Manchester. He was 1st a reporter, then an assistant producer on current affairs programmes, before returning to his love of history with his 1981 series In Search of the Dark Ages for BBC2. This explored the lives of leaders of the period, including Boadicea, King Arthur, Offa, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, Eric Bloodaxe & William the Conquerer (& gave rise to his 1st book, based upon the series).

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