Henry Crabb Robinson

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Hunnekuhl
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Romantic Literature ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Moral Relevance ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy

Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867) earned his place in literary history as a perceptive diarist from 1811 onwards. Drawing substantially on hitherto unpublished manuscript sources, Henry Crabb Robinson: Romantic Comparatist, 1790–1811 discusses his formal and informal engagement with a wide variety of English and European Romantic literature prior to this point. Robinson thus emerges as a pioneering literary critic whose unique philosophical erudition underpinned his activity as a cross-cultural disseminator of literature during the early Romantic period. A Dissenter barred from the English universities, he educated himself thoroughly during his teenage years, and began to publish in radical journals. Godwin’s philosophy subsequently inspired Robinson’s first theory of literature. When in Germany from 1800–05, Robinson became the leading British scholar of Kant’s critical philosophy, which informed his discussions of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and other German literature. After his return to London, Robinson aided Hazlitt’s understanding of Kant and early career as a writer; this also laid the foundation for Robinson’s lifelong critical admiration of Hazlitt’s works. Robinson’s distinctive comparative criticism further enabled him to draw compelling parallels between Wordsworth, Blake, and Herder, and to discern ‘moral excellence’ in Christian Leberecht Heyne’s Amathonte. This excellence also prompted Robinson’s transmission of Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul to England in 1811, as well as a profound exchange of ideas with Coleridge. Robinson’s ingenious adaptation of Kantian aesthetic autonomy into a revolutionary theory of literature’s moral relevance, Philipp Hunnekuhl finds, anticipated the current ‘ethical turn’ in literary studies.

Moral Discourse in A.W. Schlegel, Schiller, Goethe, and Lessing

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-128
Author(s):  
Philipp Hunnekuhl
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Relevance ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy ◽  
Informal Discussion ◽  
Practical Criticism ◽  
Letter Series

Chapter four focuses on Robinson’s five-letter series on German literature, in particular Goethe and Schiller, in the Monthly Register and Encyclopaedian Magazine (1802–03) that accompanied his transmissions of Kantianism to England, as well as his articles on Lessing in the Unitarian Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature (1806). Read against the backdrop of Robinson’s explications of Kant and informal discussion of August Wilhelm Schlegel, all of these writings emerge as erudite, autonomous attempts at resolving the impasse between aesthetic autonomy and literature’s moral relevance detailed in the preceding chapter. These attempts are further characterized by an experimental oscillation between Kantian and post-Kantian approaches to art, and demonstrate that Robinson was increasingly regarding literary form as those universal parameters that may facilitate moral discourse across national, cultural, and historical gulfs. The letters on German literature, and afterwards the appreciation of the ‘free-thinking spirit and love of humanity’ (Diana Behler) in Lessing’s cosmopolitanism, hence enabled Robinson to establish in terms of practical criticism his ‘ethical turn’ away from notions of full aesthetic autonomy and towards his critical principle of ‘Free Moral Discourse’.

1944-1958

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-278
Author(s):  
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
The West ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Anna Seghers ◽  
The Times ◽  
Foreign Ministry

This part recounts how, after they were liberated by the Russians, the author and his wife made their way to Warsaw. He then joined the Communist Party and began working for the Foreign Ministry. But since he did not adhere to the strict policies of the Communist Party, he was eventually imprisoned and dismissed from the party. This dismissal led to his work as a journalist and his return to German culture, and it enabled him to turn his love for German culture into a profession. From 1950 to 1958, he became the foremost Polish literary critic of German literature from the East and the West, and he befriended some of the most important writers and critics of the times, such as Anna Seghers, Bertolt Brecht, Hans Mayer, Siegfried Lenz, Heinrich Böll, and many of the members of the famous Group 47.

Sørensen, Villy (1929–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren R. Fauth
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Franz Kafka ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Philosophy And Literature ◽  
Philosophy Of Culture ◽  
Hermann Broch

Villy Sørensen was a prominent intellectual figure of 20th-century Denmark. His work spanned social commentary, philosophy, and literature. He was a sophisticated literary critic, author of tales based on Norse and Greek mythology, and an outstanding translator of Latin and German literature, particularly of modernist writers of the German-language tradition such as Franz Kafka and Hermann Broch. His fiction comprises only a small part of his oeuvre, the most notable being the early tales Sære historier (1953) and Ufarlige historier [Harmless Tales] (1955), and a later collection of short prose, Formynderfortællinger [Tutelary Tales] (1964). The remainder of his legacy consists of philosophical and cultural treatises, and literary criticisms such as Digtere og dæmoner (1959). In this latter work, Sørensen, who was especially oriented towards German letters, provides in-depth perspectives on such modernist writers as Franz Kafka, Hermann Broch, and Thomas Mann. To the philosophy of culture belongs Seneca—humanisten ved Neros hof [Seneca: The Humanist at the Court of Nero] (1976), in which Sørensen’s impressive scholarship and overview are displayed to the full. Moreover, his body of work includes a number of renderings, collections of lectures, speeches and essays, and newspaper commentaries.

Imagining a Transpacific and Feminist Asian American Archive

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-370
Author(s):  
Denise Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Sexual Relationship ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Defining Moment ◽  
The Road ◽  
John Okada ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Multiple Paths ◽  
1960S And 1970S

A brief moment in karen tei yamashita's recent novel i hotel (2010) resurrects a crucial fragment of asian american literary history. Yamashita's book—part send-up and part recounting of actual events—pays homage to and reimagines the multiple paths that were critical to the late-1960s and 1970s Asian American movement. In a small yet important scene, I Hotel highlights how the development of an Asian American literary canon was entwined with the production of heroic masculinity. Three men drive four hundred miles to visit Dorothy Okada, widow of the author John Okada, on a mission of archival recovery and masculinist “heroics” (96). Their adventure begins when one of the men discovers Okada's 1957 novel No-No Boy (now a canonical work) and a letter that mentions the possible existence of an unpublished manuscript by Okada. Ultimately, the trip is unsuccessful. “What happens next,” the narrator tells us, “is history” (97). Confronted by the lack of public interest in Okada's work, Dorothy has burned his papers, and the disappointed men can only ask ridiculously inappropriate questions about the couple's marriage and sexual relationship. In this story, the men who set out to become heroes of Asian American literary studies are thwarted by a woman's failure to preserve the text, and they reduce Dorothy to a supporting role. Yet in recapturing the gendered division at the heart of this defining moment in Asian American literary history, I Hotel also reminds us of other narrative, methodological, and theoretical paths. “As time drags on,” the narrator muses a few pages earlier, “other events step up to the plate, and one begins to wonder why any fork in the road presented the less traveled option” (95).

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Philosopher as a Literary Critic

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Don Ihde ◽  
Benjamin Suhl
Keyword(s):  
Literary Critic ◽  
Jean Paul

PROBLEMS OF POLISH ROMANTICISM IN THE PERCEPTION OF LITERARY CRITIC MIHAL GRABOVSKYJ (according to the materials of correspondence)

2019 ◽  
pp. 312-320
Author(s):  
Iryna Rudenko
Keyword(s):  
German Romanticism ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Romantic Literature ◽  
Integrated Research ◽  
Independent Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Conceptual Reasoning ◽  
Communicative Structure ◽  
First Time ◽  
Second Period

Problems of polish romanticism in the perception of literary critic Mihal Grabovskyj (according to the materials of correspondence). This article is devoted to integrated research into correspondence of polish literary man M. Grabovskyj, analyzed literary and philosophic views of master in a diachronic aspect, his aesthetic priorities, described the evolution of general vital references of theoretician, and outlined the division into periods of creation and philosophic views of figure. A lot of attention is given to elucidation letters’ genres of M. Grabovskyj and its style. For the first time it is the attempt of new valuation of his achievements and intentions, consideration and description epistolary heritage of M. Grabovskyj, which include theoretical-literary dialogues with the famous polish artists of XIX c. In his enormous array there are the conceptual reasoning andestimations of both work of separate writers and of that timeliterary process. The looks of writer were constantly evolved, that does any division into periods of correspondence conditional enough. However there sre distinguished two periods: European-”loyal” (1823 -1843) and later “tendentious” clerical-panslavics’ (1843 – 1863). The range of letters’ problems of of the first period marks adaptation of ideas of European (German) romanticism to national traditions, grouping and consolidation by the leaders of Polish romantic literature. These ideas contain optimistic character and sent to deepening the national perception of the world. The second period is characterized by correlations of the own theory of romanticism, ambiguousness of communicative structure. Grabovskyj comprehended the nomenclature of texts of romantic canon. The letters of М. Grabovskyj, that became the article of independent analysis first, substantially specify presentation in the relation to his literary- aesthetic program realized in the articles. In that correspondences, especially in those that are addressed to the closest friends he was frank and formulated the positions laconically and clearly. In the letters of artist it is legitimate to see continuation of critical articles.

scholarly journals The Moor's Last Sight : Spanish-Moorish exoticism and the gender of history in British Romantic poetry

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Diego Saglia
Keyword(s):  
Lord Byron ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Felicia Hemans ◽  
Romantic Literature ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Romantic Poetry ◽  
Letitia Landon ◽  
New States ◽  
Joanna Baillie ◽  
Poetic Texts

Legends and tales of Islamic Granada were among the most frequently re-elaborated exotic subjects in British Romantic literature. A popular theme in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Spanish Orientalism attracted both famous writers such as Lord Byron, Joanna Baillie, Washington Irving, Felicia Hemans or Letitia Landon, and less familiar ones such as Lord Porchester, George Moir and Lady Dacre. This essay concentrates on one component of the myth of Granada which enjoyed great diffusion in Romantic-period literature, the tale of the Moor's Last Sigh and the tears shed by the last Muslim monarch on leaving his capital forever after the Christian conquest in 1492. The aim is to illustrate how, in migrating from its original context, this tale comes to signify and emblematize issues of gender and notions of history as progress specific to British culture. The poetic texts examined here employ the Spanish-Orientalist myth to elaborate ideas of masculinity and femininity, as well as reflections on power and its extinction, the fall of empires and the emergence of new states. Thus King Boabdil's tears were exotically popular also because they were removed from their original meaning and import, and refashioned into vehicles for ideological concerns proper to British Romantic-period culture

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Philipp Hunnekuhl
Keyword(s):  
Career Choice ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Lyrical Ballads

The introduction elaborates the key claim of the book, namely that Robinson was the most pioneering comparative critic in England during the early Romantic period. He developed a revolutionary theory of literature’s cross-cultural ethical relevance from his unrivalled understanding of Kantian and post-Kantian thought, the Anglo-French philosophical tradition, as well as his broad reading across English, German, and French literature, primarily. Robinson’s prescient 1802 critique of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads as generating non-didactic moral discourse emerges as the exemplary manifestation of his critical approach, according to which a poet’s aspiration to artistic disinterestedness, though never to be fulfilled entirely, may function as a catalyst for moral disinterestedness. The introduction further places this claim in its historical and present-day contexts – from Hazlitt, Schiller, and the Schlegels’ critical schools to Walter Benjamin’s dissertation on German Romantic criticism to the present ‘ethical turn’ in literary studies – before parcelling it out by means of chapter synopses. It also clarifies the terminology that Robinson applied, for instance ‘literator’ for his career choice of cross-cultural literary critic and disseminator – or comparatist, in today’s terms.

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