Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time: The European Imagination, 1860-1920 - Softcover

Broch, Hermann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226075168 ISBN 13: 9780226075167

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1984

Synopsis

Hermann Broch (1886-1951) is remembered among English-speaking readers for his novels The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil, and among German-speaking readers for his novels as well as his works on moral and political philosophy, his aesthetic theory, and his varied criticism. This study reveals Broch as a major historian as well, one who believes that true historical understanding requires the faculties of both poet and philosopher.

Through an analysis of the changing thought and career of the Austrian poet, librettist, and essaist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Broch attempts to define and analyze the major intellectual issues of the European fin de siècle, a period that he characterizes according to the Nietzschean concepts of the breakdown of rationality and the loss of a central value system. The result is a major examination of European thought as well as a comparative study of political systems and artistic styles.

About this title

About the Author

Michael P. Steinberg is president of the American Academy in Berlin and Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History and professor of music and German studies at Brown University. He is the author, most recently, of Judaism Musical and Unmusical, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226075168
• ISBN 13: 9780226075167
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216