The Chain of Things : Divinatory Magic and the Practice of Reading in German Literature and Thought, 1850 1940

Eric Downing

ISBN 10: 1501715917 / ISBN 13: 9781501715914

Editore: Cornell University Press Apr 2018, 2018

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Neuware - Eric Downing is Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina.

Codice articolo 9781501715914

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Chain of Things : Divinatory Magic and the Practice of Reading in German Literature and Thought, 1850 1940
• Editore: Cornell University Press Apr 2018
• Data di pubblicazione: 2018
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1501715917
• ISBN 13: 9781501715914
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 229 L x 152 A x 24 P (millimetri) 229 millimetri di larghezza per 152 millimetri di altezza per 24 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 907 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

In The Chain of Things, Eric Downing shows how the connection between divinatory magic and reading shaped the experience of reading and aesthetics among nineteenth-century realists and modernist thinkers. He explores how writers, artists, and critics such as Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin drew on the ancient practice of divination, connecting the Greek idea of sympathetic magic to the German aesthetic concept of the attunement of mood and atmosphere.

Downing deftly traces the genealogical connection between reading and art in classical antiquity, nineteenth-century realism, and modernism, attending to the ways in which the modern re-enchantment of the world—both in nature and human society—consciously engaged ancient practices that aimed at preternatural prediction. Of particular significance to the argument presented in The Chain of Things is how the future figured into the reading of texts during this period, a time when the future as a narrative determinant or article of historical faith was losing its force. Elaborating a new theory of magic as a critical tool, Downing secures crucial links between the governing notions of time, world, the "real," and art.

Informazioni sull?autore

Eric Downing is Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina.