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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.

Originally published in 1978, this study presents a detailed analysis of the major literary movements in Austria and Germany from the end of the nineteenth century to the collapse of the Third Reich. It examines the plethora of literary genres which marked the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

It has been shown that the total number of women who published in German in the 18th and 19th centuries was approximately 3, 500, but even by 1918 only a few of them were known. The reason for this lies in the selection processes to which the authors have been subjected, and it is this selection process that is the focus of the research here presented. The selection criteria have not simply been gender-based but have had much to do with the urgent quest for establishing a German Nation State in 1848 and beyond. Prutz, Gottschall, Kreyßig and others found it necessary to use literary historiography, which had been established by 1835, in order to construct an ideal of 'Germanness' at a time when a political unity remained absent, and they wove women writers into this plot. After unification in 1872, this kind of weaving seemed to have become less pressing, and other discourses came to the fore, especially those revolving round femininity vs. masculinity, and races. The study of the processes at work here will enhance current debates about the literary canon by tracing its evolution and identifying the factors which came to determine the visibility or obscurity of particular authors and texts. The focus will be on a number of case studies, but, instead of isolating questions of gender, Gender, Canon and Literary History will discuss the broader cultural context.

While sociologists have long agreed that the problems of modern and contemporary subjectivity crystallize in the issue of romantic relationships and love (e.g., Luhmann, Illouz, Beck, etc.), the theme of love, so crucial to the foundational text of modern German literature, Goethe's Werther, all but disappeared from German prose literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet over the past fifteen years German-language literature has witnessed an explosion of novels with \"Liebe\" in their titles as well as novels that centrally focus on intersubjective erotic and emotional relationships. A number of major contemporary writers (Treichel, Walser, Kermani, Ortheil, Maron, Zaimoglu, Genazino) have written Liebesromane or novels in which significant sociohistorical questions are refracted through the love relationships of their protagonists. German film likewise has increasingly thematized love relationships under postromantic conditions, e.g. in the films of the Berlin school. Simultaneously, the development of both feminist and LGBTQ politics over the past decades has exploded the heteronormative discourses of desire in a way that has both expanded and enriched the lovers' discourse, while recent developments of urban (hetero)sexuality have expanded the previously available models of expressing erotic relationships in ways that are reminiscent of the utopian ending of Goethe's first version of Stella. The present collection offers a wide-ranging set of essays on these developments. Contributors: Esther K. Bauer, Sven Glawion, Silke Horstkotte, Sarra Kassem, Maria Roca Lizarazu, Helmut Schmitz, Angelika Vybiral. Helmut Schmitz is Reader in German at the University of Warwick. Peter Davies is Professor and Head of German at the University of Edinburgh.

Aura und Eros markieren in Walter Benjamins Denken ein Spannungsfeld philosophischer Fragestellungen, anthropologischer Uberlegungen und politischer Intervention. Dass in diesem Kontext zu Benjamins theoretischem Repertoire auch literarische Motive gehoren, wurde bislang kaum gesehen. Anhand detaillierter Lekturen von Benjamins \"Einbahnstrae\", der \"Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert\" sowie seinen Essays zur Krise der Erfahrung in der Moderne zeichnet Eva Axer Benjamins Auseinandersetzung insbesondere mit dem Kosmiker Ludwig Klages nach. Im Zentrum steht dabei Benjamins Versuch, den Begriff der Erfahrung in Abgrenzung zu lebensphilosophischen Stromungen zu besetzen. Das Buch rekonstruiert, wie Benjamin literarische Motive und biographische Figuren in die Darstellung seiner philosophischen Konzepte einbezieht und andererseits Momente seiner Sprachphilosophie auf die literarischen Darstellungen ubertragt. Das Buch wirft somit gleichermaen neues Licht auf Benjamins Darstellungsverfahren und Denkfiguren.

\"Heilstheater\" enthullt eine bislang kaum bekannte \"barocke\" Seite von Kleists Schreiben. Harst untersucht ausgewahlte Texte von Kleist und Gryphius mit der Frage, welche literarischen Figuren fur die Verhandlung und Einlosung von Heilsversprechen eingesetzt werden. Ausgehend von einer genauen Analyse der theatralen Schreibstrategien der Berliner Abendblatter und der \"Gottesurteile\", diskutiert die Studie die medialen Erscheinungsbedingungen Gottes. Der problematische, aber auch produktive Zusammenhang von Theater und Theologie im Trauerspiel wird herausgearbeitet. Die Problematik des theatralen Heilsbeweises wird - so schliet die Arbeit - von Kleists Der zerbrochne Krug durchgearbeitet, der in der figuralen Uberblendung von Adam und Odipus die biblische Katastrophe in ein abgrundiges \"Lustspiel\" verkehrt.