Complex Pleasure: Forms of Feeling in German Literature
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.71 (899 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0804729409 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 264 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-01-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"How to read literature and literary scholarship" according to Amos. Stanley Corngold is the most perspicacious reader of Franz Kafka living in America today (see for example his recent LAMBENT TRACES and earlier THE NECESSITY OF FORM). In this book, he offers a series of equally fine readings in German philosophy and literature, including an essay on Kafka's novel "The Man who Disappeared (AMERIKA)." I highly recommend Corngold's work to those who see literature as more than "content" (was the previous reviewer looking for plot summaries?). This is a beautifully crafted book that takes seriously the exigency of writing.. With pleasure. A Customer It is always amusing to come across a work that favors form over content. But perhaps scholarly books are not really designed to be read for this kind of entertainment - I have the feeling that someone is missing the point here.
At the same time, through the deftness, range, and surprise of its execution, the book itself conveys complex pleasure. The reader will also find fascinating, hitherto untranslated material by Nietzsche ("On Moods") and Kafka (important sections from his journals and from his unfinished novel The Boy Who Sank Out of Sight).. On the basis of close readings of these authors Stanley Corngold makes vivid the following ideas: that where there is literature there is complex pleasure; that this pleasure is complex because it involves the impression of a disclosure; that this thought is foremost in the minds of a number of canonical writers; that important literary works in the German tradition—fiction, poetry, critique—can be illuminated through their treatment of literary feeling; and, finally, that the conceptual terms for these forms of feeling continually vary.The types of fe
I was persuaded by the perspicacity and inventiveness of the individual chapters and even more by the cumulative effect of the readings of Lessing, Kant, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Musil, Kafka, Trakl, and Benjamin."—Ian Balfour, York University.. "Elegance and intelligence meet on virtually every page of this intriguing book