Monday 12 September 2016

GERMAN LITERATURE- A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS BOYLE

This book throws light on the 250 years of vast German Literature.  As the title suggests it is a short introduction to the wider world.  To start with German literature begins with the reformation of the early 16th century.  It is the literature of the states.  The Lutheranism is important.  The first chapter is about a historical over view .The laying of foundation – The 2nd chapter brings forth the steps by which the literary Genres gained momentum.  John Gutenberg’s printing press set up in Mainz around 1445 was the most influential contribution to world culture.  In 1681, for the first time more books were published in German than in Latin.
     English literary influence was at its strongest in Hamburg and Bremen.  The first German translation of Robinson Crusoe is in 1720.  The seven year war which concluded in 1763, inaugurated a cultural transformation in Germany. The last chapter about “Traumas and memories” deals with the “The nemesis of culture” and the role of Paul celan.  Learning to mourn is also been given a detailed description. 
      Author has also suggested a list of book for further reading.  Nicholas Boyle has made an immense effort to make readers relevant about the influential concepts in the growth of German literature.’’ Formal education will make you a living; self- education will make you a fortune.’’-        Jim rohn.  That’s how people in those times did, because of that they became great pillars of a national literature. Ex- Goethe and Schiller
SNIPPETS:
*Lessing’s ‘Miss Sara sampson’ in 1755 was his first major success, is virtually a manifesto for the English style.
*Goethe was exceptional among 18th century German writers.’ The sorrows of young werther’ made Goethe a European name. It is a novel in letters.
*With Schiller’s ‘The robbers’ an independent modern German literary tradition began.
*The supposed opposition between ‘life and ‘art’, ‘the bourgeois’, and ‘the artist’, is central to the stories Mann wrote.
*Mann made something that Germany’s high cultural tradition could recognise as ‘Art Poetry’. George’s writing took on a more prophetic and apocalyptic tone.[The seventh ring, 1907]
*In 1885 after the war, Goethe’s papers were opened to the nation. The writings of Goethe and his fellow ‘classics’’, and the scholarship of the academic bureaucracy which edited them all, became the twin pillars of a German national literature.
*In 1953 these literary remains of another ‘Classic’ were finally inserted in the Goethe-schiller archive.

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