Ritchie Robertson – författare

'The best single-volume study of the Enlightenment that we have' Literary ReviewThe Enlightenment is one of the formative periods of Western history, yet more than 300 years after it began, it remains controversial. It is often seen as the fountainhead of modern values such as human rights, religious toleration, freedom of thought, scientific thought as an exemplary form of reasoning, and rationality and evidence-based argument. Others accuse the Enlightenment of putting forward a scientific rationality which ignores the complexity and variety of human beings, propagates shallow atheism, and aims to subjugate nature to so-called technical progress.Answering the question 'what is Enlightenment?' Kant famously urged men and women above all to 'have the courage to use your own understanding'. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. His book goes behind the controversies about the Enlightenment to return to its original texts and to show that above all it sought to increase human happiness in this world by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. His book overturns many received opinions - for example, that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion (though it did challenge the authority traditionally assumed by the Churches). It is a master-class in 'big picture' history, about one of the foundational epochs of modern times.

'When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect ...' So begins Franz Kafka's most famous story Metamorphosis.Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the twentieth century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation. All three of his novels, The Trial, The Castle, and The Man Who Disappeared [America], were published after his death and helped to found Kafka's reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century.Kafka's fiction vividly evokes bizarre situations: a commercial traveller is turned into an insect, a banker is arrested by a mysterious court, a fasting artist starves to death in the name of art, a singing mouse becomes the heroine of her nation. Attending both to Kafka's crisis-ridden life and to the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson shows how his work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed 'the death of God'. The result is an up-to-date and accessible portrait of a fascinating author which shows us ways to read and make sense of his perplexing and absorbing work.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Kafka wrote Das Urteil, his first major work of literature, in a single night in the autumn of 1912. It was for him a breakthrough, and closely connected with it was the awakening of his interest in Jewish culture. This is a general study of Kafka, which explores the literary and historical context of his writings, and links them with his emergent sense of Jewish identity. What is emphasized throughout is Kafka's concern with contemporary society - his distrust of its secular, humanitarian ideals - and his desire for a new kind of community, based on religion.

The Jewish Question in German Literature, 1749-1939 is an erudite and searching literary study of the uneasy position of the Jews in Germany and Austria from the first pleas for Jewish emancipation during the Enlightenment to the eve of the Holocaust. Trying to avoid hindsight, and drawing on a wide range of literary texts, Ritchie Robertson offers a close examination of attempts to construct a Jewish identity suitable for an increasingly secular world. He examines both literary portrayals of Jews by Gentile writers - whether antisemitic, friendly, or ambivalent - and efforts to reinvent Jewish identities by the Jews themselves, in response to antisemitism culminating in Zionism. No other study by a single author deals with German-Jewish relations so comprehensively and over such a long period of literary history. Robertson's new work will prove stimulating for anyone interested in the modern Jewish experience, as well as for scholars and students of German fiction, prose, and political culture.

Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was recognized as Britain's most distinguished historian of ideas. Many of his essays discussed thinkers of what this book calls the 'long Enlightenment' (from Vico in the eighteenth century to Marx and Mill in the nineteenth, with Machiavelli as a precursor). Yet he is particularly associated with the concept of the 'Counter-Enlightenment', comprising those thinkers (Herder, Hamann, and even Kant) who in Berlin's view reacted against the Enlightenment's naïve rationalism, scientism and progressivism, its assumption that human beings were basically homogeneous and could be rendered happy by the remorseless application of scientific reason. Berlin's 'Counter-Enlightenment' has received critical attention, but no-one has yet analysed the understanding of the Enlightenment on which it rests. Isaiah Berlin and the Enlightenment explores the development of Berlin's conception of the Enlightenment, noting its curious narrowness, its ambivalence, and its indebtedness to a specific German intellectual tradition. Contributors to the book examine his comments on individual writers, showing how they were inflected by his questionable assumptions, and arguing that some of the writers he assigned to the 'Counter-Enlightenment' have closer affinities to the Enlightenment than he recognized. By locating Berlin in the history of Enlightenment studies, this book also makes a contribution to defining the historical place of his work and to evaluating his intellectual legacy.

'All his powers were in decline; the only thing growing stronger in him was the conviction that all this could not last much longer, that his demise was imminent.'The Buddenbrooks (1900) was Thomas Mann's first major success. It draws on his own family history and on his vivid memories of growing up in the commercial town of Lübeck in North Germany. The narrative traces the decline of a wealthy, established merchant family, from their height during the last decades of the nineteenth century, to the onset of uncertainty in the modern world. The novel displays Mann's interest in decline as a psychological process, where artistic sensibility weakens the ruthless business instincts that founded the Buddenbrooks' prosperity. At the centre is the reluctant businessman Thomas Buddenbrook, a tragic figure who conscientiously dedicates himself to a way of life that gradually undermines him. Mike Mitchell's new English translation is accompanied by Ritchie Robertson's introduction and explanatory notes, illuminating the cultural, philosophical, and personal context of the novel's composition.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Thomas Mann's later short stories published between 1925 and 1953 explore his abiding interest in human nature and his surroundings. Disorder and Early Sorrow and Mario and the Magician originate from Mann's own experiences: domestic life at the height of inflation under the early Weimar Republic; and a symbolic encounter with Fascism during an Italian holiday. The Transposed Heads: An Indian Legend is tongue-in-cheek legend set in ancient times and The Law is a subtly ironic narrative about Moses and the Ten Commandments, after which Mann returns to 1920s Germany with The Black Swan, a story of an aging woman's passion for a young American, confronting the taboo subject of cancer. The stories illustrate Mann's progression from domestic realism to an elaborate 'late style' with mythic overtones. This collection shows the continuing literary development of one of Europe's most important writers.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Hans Castorp filled his lungs with the pure mountain air--this fresh, light atmosphere that was so easy to inhale and held no scent of moisture, no content, no memories...'Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924) is a social comedy with tragic overtones, providing a portrait of Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century. The novel recounts how an apparently simple North German engineer, Hans Castorp, comes to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, intending to visit his sick cousin, and ends up staying for seven years. He matures intellectually and emotionally, encountering love and death amid a cast of vivid characters who are portrayed with Dickensian humour and sophisticated irony, until he is jerked out of his torpor by the outbreak of the First World War.This translation is accompanied by an accessible introduction by Ritchie Robertson, and detailed notes explaining the many cultural and historical references in the text.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'K. kept feeling that he had lost himself, or was further away in a strange land than anyone had ever been before'A remote village covered almost permanently in snow and dominated by a castle and its staff of dictatorial, sexually predatory bureaucrats - this is the setting for Kafka's story about a man seeking both acceptance in the village and access to the castle. Kafka breaks new ground in evoking a dense village community fraught with tensions, and recounting an often poignant, occasionally farcical love-affair. He also explores the relation between the individual and power, and asks why the villagers so readily submit to an authority which may exist only in their collective imagination.Published only after Kafka's death, The Castle appeared in the same decade as modernist masterpieces by Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Mann and Proust, and is among the central works of modern literature. This translation follows the text established by critical scholarship, and manuscript variants are mentioned in the notes. The introduction provides guidance to the text without reducing the reader's own freedom to make sense of this fascinatingly enigmatic novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K. for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.'A successful professional man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. The mysterious court which conducts his trial is outwardly co-operative, but capable of horrific violence. Faced with this ambiguous authority, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure. He consults various advisers without escaping his fate. Was there some way out that he failed to see? Kafka's unfinished novel has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem.One of the iconic figures of modern world literature, Kafka writes about universal problems of guilt, responsibility, and freedom; he offers no solutions, but provokes his readers to arrive at meanings of their own. This new edition includes the fragmentary chapters that were omitted from the main text, in a translation that is both natural and exact, and an introduction that illuminates the novel and its author. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The 'Jewish Question' in German Literature, 1749-1939 is an erudite and searching literary study of the uneasy position of the Jews in Germany and Austria from the first pleas for Jewish emancipation during the Enlightenment to the eve of the Holocaust. Trying to avoid hindsight, and drawing on a wide range of literary texts, Ritchie Robertson offers a close examination of attempts to construct a Jewish identity suitable for an increasingly secular world. He examines both literary portrayals of Jews by Gentile writers - whether antisemitic, friendly, or ambivalent - and efforts to reinvent Jewish identities by the Jews themselves, in response to antisemitism culminating in Zionism. No other study by a single author deals with German-Jewish relations so comprehensively and over such a long period of literary history. Robertson's new work will prove stimulating for anyone interested in the modern Jewish experience, as well as for scholars and students of German fiction, prose, and political culture.

This groundbreaking new translation of The Interpretation of Dreams is the first to be based on the original text published in November 1899. It restores Freud's original argument, unmodified by revisions he made following the book's critical reception which included, under the influence of his associate Wilhelm Stekel, the theory of dream symbolism. Reading the first edition reveals Freud's original emphasis on the use of words in dreams and on the difficulty of deciphering them and Joyce Crick captures with far greater immediacy and accuracy than previous translations by Strachey's Freud's emphasis and terminology. An accessible introduction by Ritchie Robertson summarizes and comments on Freud's argument and relates it to his early work. Close annotation explains Freud's many autobiographical, literary and historical allusions and makes this the first edition to present Freud's early work in its full intellectual and cultural context. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Hoffmann is among the greatest and most popular of the German Romantics. This selection, while stressing the variety of his work, puts in the foreground those tales in which the real and the supernatural are brought into contact and conflict. The humour of these tales is a result of the incongruity of supernatural beings at large in an ostentatiously everyday world. They include The Golden Pot, recognized as Hoffmann's masterpiece by himself and posterity; its spine-chilling companion tale, The Sandman, which Offenbach drew on for his opera Tales of Hoffmann, and which Freud examines in his essay `The Uncanny'; two longer and more elaborate fantasies, set respectively in Germany and Italy; and the late story, My Cousin's Corner Window, which shows the powers of the imagination being applied to everyday urban life, and marks a transition in European literature generally from Romanticism to Realism.Ritchie Robertson's detailed introduction places the stories in their intellectual and historical context and explores their compelling narrative complexities. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This is a study of mock-epic poetry in English, French, and German from the 1720s to the 1840s. While mock-heroic poetry is a parodistic counterpart to serious epic, mock-epic poetry starts by parodying epic but moves on to much wider and richer literary explorations; it relies heavily on intertextual allusion to other works, on narratorial irony, on the sympathetic and sometimes libertine presentation of sexual relatons, and on a range of satirical devices. It includes well-known texts (Pope's Dunciad, Byron's Don Juan, Heine's Atta Troll) and others which are little known (Ratschky's Melchior Striregel, Parny's La Guerre des Dieux). It owes a marked debt to Italian romance epic (especially Ariosto). The study places these texts in the literary context of the decline of serious epic, which helped mock epic to flourish, and of the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' which questioned the authority of Homer's and Virgil's epics; and it relates their substance to contemporary debates about questions of religion and gender.

In 1878 the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold wrote: 'Goethe is the greatest poet of modern times... because having a very considerable gift for poetry, he was at the same time, in the width, depth, and richness of his criticism of life, by far our greatest modern man.'In this Very Short Introduction Ritchie Robertson covers the life and work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): scientist, administrator, artist, art critic and supreme literary writer in a vast variety of genres. Looking at Goethe's poetry, novels and drama pieces, as well as his travel writing, autobiography, and essays on art and aesthetics, Robertson analyses some of the key themes in his works: love, nature, religion and tragedy. Dispelling the misconception of Goethe as a sedate Victorian sage, Robertson shows how much of his art was rooted in turbulent personal conflicts, and draws on recent research to present a complete portrait of the scientific work and political activity which accompanied Goethe's writings.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Key dimensions of Thomas Mann's writing and life are explored in this collection of specially commissioned essays. In addition to introductory chapters on all the main works of fiction, the essays and diaries, there are four chapters examining Mann's oeuvre in relation to major themes. These thematic explorations include his position as a realistic writer concerned with the history of his own times and as a commentator on German and American politics; his controversial reputation as an intellectual novelist; the literary techniques that enabled his challenging fictions to appeal to a wide audience; and the homosexual subtext running through his fiction and diaries. A final chapter looks at the pitfalls of translating Mann into English. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading. Altogether the volume provides an invaluable resource for scholars and students.

Key dimensions of Thomas Mann's writing and life are explored in this collection of specially commissioned essays. In addition to introductory chapters on all the main works of fiction, the essays and diaries, there are four chapters examining Mann's oeuvre in relation to major themes. These thematic explorations include his position as a realistic writer concerned with the history of his own times and as a commentator on German and American politics; his controversial reputation as an intellectual novelist; the literary techniques that enabled his challenging fictions to appeal to a wide audience; and the homosexual subtext running through his fiction and diaries. A final chapter looks at the pitfalls of translating Mann into English. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading. Altogether the volume provides an invaluable resource for scholars and students.

Primarily celebrated for his dramatic works Minna von Barnhelm, Emilia Galotti and Nathan der Weise, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s diverse pursuits extended far beyond the stage. From incisive journalism to innovative reflections on poetry, aesthetics and theology, his wide-ranging intellectual interests place him firmly alongside contemporary polymaths such as Diderot. In this extensive study an international team of experts explores Lessing’s contribution to both the German and broader European Enlightenments to reveal:the energy and acuity of his critical writing, which made him an exemplar for subsequent German authors;the originality and lasting significance of Laocoon, his groundbreaking treatise on aesthetics, which distinguished the domains of poetry and the visual arts, and is still a major point of reference; how his reflections on theology and the Bible helped shape a view of Christianity as a historical phenomenon without absolute truth; how his Enlightenment curiosity and open-mindedness were nourished by an interest in natural science, particularly astronomy; how activities such as his adaptation of English domestic tragedy and his translations of Diderot’s theatrical writings placed him at the heart of the pan- European Enlightenment.

New essays examine 20th-c. Austrian literature in relation to history, politics, and popular culture.20th-century Austrian literature boasts many outstanding writers: Schnitzler, Musil, Rilke, Kraus, Celan, Canetti, Bernhard, Jelinek. These and others feature in broader accounts of German literature, but it is desirable to see how the Austrian literary scene -- and Austrian society itself -- shaped their writing. This volume thus surveys Austrian writers of drama, prose fiction, and lyric poetry; relates them to the distinctive history of modern Austria,a democratic republic that was overtaken by civil war and authoritarian rule, absorbed into Nazi Germany, and re-established as a neutral state; and examines their response to controversial events such as the collusion with Nazism, the Waldheim affair, and the rise of Haider and the extreme right. In addition to confronting controversy in the relations between literature, history, and politics, the volume examines popular culture in line with current trends.Contributors: Judith Beniston, Janet Stewart, Andrew Barker, Murray Hall, Anthony Bushell, Dagmar Lorenz, Juliane Vogel, Jonathan Long, Joseph McVeigh, Allyson Fiddler.Katrin Kohl is Lecturer in German and a Fellow of Jesus College, and Ritchie Robertson is Taylor Professor of German and a Fellow of The Queen's College, both at the University of Oxford.

In this concise yet comprehensive critical biography, Ritchie Robertson examines the work of Friedrich Nietzsche within the context of his life. The book traces Nietzsche’s development from outstanding classical scholar to cultural critic, who measured Imperial Germany by the standards of ancient Greece. It follows him thence to prophet (in the persona of Zarathustra) and savage polemicist against modern liberal values, offering a ‘philosophy of the future’. Robertson argues that Nietzsche’s middle-period writings offer a subtle and searching analysis of his culture, more rewarding than the strident and often-controversial later works. The book also assesses Nietzsche’s claim to be continuing the Enlightenment, and shows that he valued reason, evidence and fact, without which his historical case against Christianity would make no sense.

E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) is celebrated for his supernatural fiction such as 'The Sandman' as well as his musical achievements, notably the opera Undine. This book offers a concise yet comprehensive introduction to Hoffmann as a Romantic writer, composer and public figure. It follows his life as a lawyer, theatre director and senior judge in Berlin, where he clashed with authorities over their persecution of student radicals. Drawing on Hoffmann’s personal writings and contemporary recollections, it also highlights how historical events like Napoleon’s invasion disrupted his career. By combining his literary and musical contributions, the book presents Hoffmann as a multifaceted artist whose inventiveness, both comic and spine-chilling, remain influential today.

Franz Kafka died in 1924, when he was not yet forty-one. During his life he published only seven small books, but he left behind three unfinished novels and a mass of stories, reflections and personal writings which were published after his death. His novels in particular, alongside short stories such as The Judgement and The Metamorphosis, have made him one of the most widely read, significant and influential writers of the twentieth century. His writings show an extraordinary ability to speak to the changing concerns of later generations. This collection of essays, illustrated with manuscripts, archival material, postcards and family photographs, not only sets Kafka in the context of his life and times but also shows how his own experiences nourished his imagination. Literal travel in Western Europe enabled him, as his notebooks reveal, to practise descriptive writing. Imaginative travel through reading strengthened his fascination with remote spaces and made him aware of European colonialism. Familiar settings in his fiction become alien and bewildering. When writing about animals, he sought to enter imaginatively into their non-human way of being. This book is a celebration not just of Kafka’s achievements and creativity, but also of how – even 100 years after his death – Kafka continues to inspire new literary, theatrical and cinematic creations around the world.