Title Figures of natality : reading the political in the age of Goethe / Joseph D. O'Neil

Published New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

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Description 1 online resource Series New Directions in German Studies ; Volume 17 New directions in German studies ; Volume 17. Contents FC; New Directions in German Studies; Volumes in the series:; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1 Lyric Births: Poetic Revolution and Maieutic Technique; 2 Genre, Generation, and the Retreat of the Political; 3 Ghostly Births: The Specter of Romanticism and the Maieutics of the Medium; 4 "Not as in a mirror": Wilhelm Meister and the Haunting of Sovereignty; 5 Kleist's Machiavellian Mothers: Institution, Relation, Distribution; Conclusion: Split Summits and Bifurcated Maieutics: The Political Difference and the Future of Democracy Summary "Figures of Natality reads metaphors and narratives of birth in the age of Goethe (1770-1832) as indicators of the new, the unexpected, and the revolutionary. Using Hannah Arendt's concept of natality, Joseph O'Neil argues that Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist see birth as challenging paradigms of Romanticism as well as of Enlightenment, resisting the assimilation of the political to economics, science, or morality. They choose instead to preserve the conflicts and tensions at the heart of social, political, and poetic revolutions. In a historical reading, these tensions evolve from the idea of revolution as Arendt reads it in British North America to the social and economic questions that shape the French Revolution and from there to the question of the German nation. Alongside this geopolitical evolution, the ways of representing the political change, too, moving from the new as revolutionary eruption to economic metaphors of birth. More pressing still is the question of revolutionary subjectivity and political agency, and Goethe, Kleist, and Schiller have an answer that is remarkably close to that of Walter Benjamin, as that "secret index" through which each past age is "pointed toward redemption." Figures of Natality uncovers this index at the heart of scenes and products of birth in the age of Goethe."-- Provided by publisher "Examines the work of Goethe, Kleist, and Schiller in the light of Hannah Arendt's concept of natality"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed Subject German literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism. Birth (Philosophy) in literature. Politics and literature -- Germany -- History -- 19th century Politics and literature -- Germany -- History -- 18th century Childbirth in literature. Literature -- Philosophy. literary theory. Literary theory. Western philosophy: Enlightenment. Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers. LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- German. PHILOSOPHY -- Political. Childbirth in literature Birth (Philosophy) in literature German literature Politics and literature Geburt Motiv Literatur Geburt. Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers. Germany Deutschland Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book LC no. 2017005623 ISBN 9781501315039 150131503X 9781501315046 1501315048 9781501315053 1501315056

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