1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910332652103321

Autore

Evers Kai

Titolo

Violent Modernists : : The Aesthetics of Destruction in Twentieth-Century German Literature / / Kai Evers

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Evanston, Illinois, : Northwestern University Press, 2013

Chicago : , : Northwestern University Press, , 2013

ISBN

0-8101-2930-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (1 p.)

Disciplina

833/.9109

Soggetti

Literary Criticism / European / German

Literature - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Modernity, modernism, and violence -- Causing violence: Robert Musil's The confusions of young Torless and the path to an antireductionist theory of violence -- War, violence, and the malleable self: Robert Musil's postwar critique of violence in The man without qualities -- Kafka's poetics of the knife: on violence, truth, and ambivalence in In the penal colony -- Chemical warfare and destructive satires: Canetti and Benjamin's search for the murderous substance of satire.

Sommario/riassunto

Kai Evers's Violent Modernists: The Aesthetics of Destruction in Twentieth-Century German Literature develops a new understanding of German modernism that moves beyond the oversimplified dichotomy of an avant-garde prone to aggression on the one hand and a modernism opposed to violence on the other. Analyzing works by Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Walter Benjamin, Elias Canetti, and others, Evers argues that these authors are among the most innovative thinkers on violence and its impact on contemporary concepts of the self, history, and society.