Canetti and Nietzsche

Harriet Murphy teaches German and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick, England.

"This book deals with an important novel of a major twentieth-century writer. Murphy's approach effectively combines traditional literary criticism with such contemporary trends as feminist and post-colonial criticism, philosophical and socio-anthropological hermeneutics, and French and Anglo-American deconstruction. It is arguably the most important study of Canetti's work to come out during the last decade." — Mihai Spariosu, The University of Georgia"Murphy's work is a solid piece of scholarship based on an excellent knowledge of the critical field, be it Austrian literature or literature in German or contemporary literature and theory. It is also an original approach to a complex novel written by a young man who many years after the publication of Die Blendung became a winner of the Nobel Prize. Murphy convincingly positions her analysis of Die Blendung in a wide critical context, one with philosophical, sociological, and cultural connotations and references. She shows that in this novel the issues involved concern contemporary human community. Vividly written with a maintained intensity of style as well as with a polemical and challenging stance, Murphy's analysis grounds its reading on a wide critical and political understanding of literary phenomena." — Wladimir Krysinski, Universite de Montreal

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Genesis of the Novel 2. The Reception of Die Blendung: The Critical Reputation of the Novel 3. Agon's Carnival: Laughter and Play in Die Blendung (1) or "Alle guten Dinge lachen" 4. Agon's Carnival: Laughter and Play in Die Blendung (2) 5. Dionysus Dissolves Fixity and Form: "Frohlockender Wahnsinn" in Die Blendung 6. Paradoy, Postmodernism, Careerism 7. Pure Comic Alogism or the Music that is Non-sense: "Frohlockender Wahsinn" in "Privateigentum" and Thereafter 8. The Breakdown of Agon: Degeneration of Play and the Rise of the Big Idea Conclusion. Finished and Unfinished Business: The Place of the Novel in the Works as a Whole Notes Bibliography: General Sources Consulted Bibliography: Specialist Sources Consulted Index