Silke-Maria Weineck is Chair of Comparative Literature and Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche (2002).

The Tragedy of Fatherhood is a tour de force that will open new avenues of research. Although the pater familias is generally considered the model for all figures of authority, his position has gone largely unaddressed in criticism except from the vantage point of the son or the subservient subject. Silke Weineck’s elegant and thought-provoking study lifts the father from the shadows and lets him speak as a figure that is at once powerful but vulnerable, the bedrock of the social order but also its most contested member. The book combines an enormous wealth of learning with grace and wit, and is written in a manner that should be the envy of all scholars in the humanities.

• Section I: Freud’s Fatherhood IOne RevenantsSection II: The Tragic FatherTwo The Laius ComplexThree Oedipus PatêrFour “I Must Do What I’ve Been Told”: Abraham and the Conditions of PaternitySection III: The Political FatherFive Aristotle and the Body of the FatherSix Paternity and the Perfect CitySeven Hobbes: The End of the Paternal TriadSection IV: The Rise of the SonEight “I Will Be King No More”: Lessing’s Philotas and the Abdication of the FatherNine Kleist: Paternal Resurrections Section V: Freud’s Fatherhood IITen The Gschnas, or the Path to the Fatherless SocietyConclusion Dead ChildrenBibliography

Silke-Maria Weineck is Chair of Comparative Literature and Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche (2002).

The Tragedy of Fatherhood is a tour de force that will open new avenues of research. Although the pater familias is generally considered the model for all figures of authority, his position has gone largely unaddressed in criticism except from the vantage point of the son or the subservient subject. Silke Weineck’s elegant and thought-provoking study lifts the father from the shadows and lets him speak as a figure that is at once powerful but vulnerable, the bedrock of the social order but also its most contested member. The book combines an enormous wealth of learning with grace and wit, and is written in a manner that should be the envy of all scholars in the humanities.

• Section I: Freud’s Fatherhood IOne RevenantsSection II: The Tragic FatherTwo The Laius ComplexThree Oedipus PatêrFour “I Must Do What I’ve Been Told”: Abraham and the Conditions of PaternitySection III: The Political FatherFive Aristotle and the Body of the FatherSix Paternity and the Perfect CitySeven Hobbes: The End of the Paternal TriadSection IV: The Rise of the SonEight “I Will Be King No More”: Lessing’s Philotas and the Abdication of the FatherNine Kleist: Paternal Resurrections Section V: Freud’s Fatherhood IITen The Gschnas, or the Path to the Fatherless SocietyConclusion Dead ChildrenBibliography

Silke-Maria Weineck is Chair of Comparative Literature and Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche (2002).

The Tragedy of Fatherhood is a tour de force that will open new avenues of research. Although the pater familias is generally considered the model for all figures of authority, his position has gone largely unaddressed in criticism except from the vantage point of the son or the subservient subject. Silke Weineck’s elegant and thought-provoking study lifts the father from the shadows and lets him speak as a figure that is at once powerful but vulnerable, the bedrock of the social order but also its most contested member. The book combines an enormous wealth of learning with grace and wit, and is written in a manner that should be the envy of all scholars in the humanities.

• Section I: Freud’s Fatherhood IOne RevenantsSection II: The Tragic FatherTwo The Laius ComplexThree Oedipus PatêrFour “I Must Do What I’ve Been Told”: Abraham and the Conditions of PaternitySection III: The Political FatherFive Aristotle and the Body of the FatherSix Paternity and the Perfect CitySeven Hobbes: The End of the Paternal TriadSection IV: The Rise of the SonEight “I Will Be King No More”: Lessing’s Philotas and the Abdication of the FatherNine Kleist: Paternal Resurrections Section V: Freud’s Fatherhood IITen The Gschnas, or the Path to the Fatherless SocietyConclusion Dead ChildrenBibliography