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The Origin of German Tragic Drama by Walter Benjamin

The Origin of German Tragic Drama

By Walter Benjamin
Introduction by George Steiner
Translated by John Osborne

By Walter Benjamin
Introduction by George Steiner
Translated by John Osborne

Best Seller

Part of Radical Thinkers

Paperback $19.95

Jun 09, 2009 | 256 Pages

The Origin of German Tragic Drama by Walter Benjamin
Paperback
Jun 09, 2009 | 256 Pages

Paperback
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  • Paperback $19.95

    Jun 09, 2009 | 256 Pages

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About The Origin of German Tragic Drama

Cited by Lukács as a principal source of literary modernism, Walter Benjamin’s study of the baroque stage-form called Trauerspiel (literally, “mourning play”) is the most complete document of his prismatic literary and philosophical practice. Engaging with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German playwrights as well as the plays of Shakespeare and Calderón and the engravings of Dürer, Benjamin attempts to show how the historically charged forms of the Trauerspiel broke free of tragedy’s mythological timelessness. From its philosophical prologue, which offers a rare account of Benjamin’s early aesthetics, to its mind-wrenching meditation on allegory, The Origin of German Tragic Drama sparkles with early insights and the seeds of Benjamin’s later thought.

Also by Walter Benjamin

The Storyteller
Walter Benjamin's Archive
Radio Benjamin
Aesthetics and Politics
See all books by Walter Benjamin

Product Details

Category: Literary Criticism | Performing Arts | Philosophy

Paperback | $19.95
Published by Verso
Jun 09, 2009 | 256 Pages | 5-1/10 x 7-7/10 | ISBN 9781844673483

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Praise

“Walter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of [the twentieth] century.”—Sunday Times

“He drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe.”—Susan Sontag

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