The Challenge of German Culture - Essays presented to Wilfried van der Will (Hardcover, New title)

This collection of essays by leading German scholars from Britain, Germany, and the United States covers German literature, culture, and politics from the Middle Ages to the present day. Literary analysis is combined with approaches derived from sociology and cultural studies; historical assessment of literature and writers is accompanied by close linguistic criticism of texts. Essays on intellectual history, the continuing impact of the Third Reich on literature, parody, the tension between high and low literature, and the special case of cultural production, including fine art, in the former German Democratic Republic are balanced with discussion of the impact of dictatorship and Anglo-Saxon Liberalism on German society, the revival of Jewry since 1945, and the legacy of "1968" on contemporary German Politics. The result is a fascinating, if electic, introduction to the vitality and richness of university German studies on the threshold of the new millennium.