Ulrich Broich - Böcker

The mystery plays of medieval England have traditionally been analysed in ways which centre on the texts and their religious significance. Hans-Jurgen Diller's major study, first published in German, seeks to recover their dramatic potential by focusing on the function of language in conventional modes of speech, prayer, address and dialogue. He looks at speech and dramatic form in the plays to reveal new insights concerning spatial and temporal orientation, the expression of emotions, and the relationships between characters on stage, between actor and audience, and between the dramatic world and the ordinary world outside it. His analysis offers new ways of understanding the relationship of vernacular drama to its liturgical antecedents, and new means of distinguishing stylistically between the cycles and between the groups of plays they comprise.

Hermann Fischer's lively and original 1991 study of Romantic verse narrative traces in comprehensive detail the origins and development of this poetic form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It brings together the longer epic verse tales of Scott, Byron and Southey and the more lyrical forms of Romantic narrative poetry, thus presenting familiar poems such as Shelley's 'Alastor' and Keats's 'The Eve of St Agnes' in the revealing but neglected context of the genre and its history. Professor Fischer addresses the question of genre from a viewpoint that is both theoretical and historical, and his study also proves illuminating in many areas of Romantic literature, covering issues such as the role of the medieval revival and the decline of neoclassicism, the relative importance of popular and more literary sources, and questions of changing taste and the reading public. This translation, extensively revised and updated, makes Hermann Fischer's acclaimed study available for the first time in English.

Mock-heroic poetry is one of the most characteristic genres of English neoclassicism in the eighteenth century. Derived from French models, the mock-heroic became something more than merely a parody of the serious epic: relieved of its gravity, it was nevertheless a legitimate and independent form of epic poetry. This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre. In the first part, Ulrich Broich shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses - epic, comedy, parody, satire and occasional poetry. The 'polyphonic' genre which emerges from this analysis stands in ironic contrast to the neoclassical ideal of decorum in a harmonious unity of discourse and form. The second part traces the history of mock-heroic poetry: its foreign sources, its beginnings in England, the 'rivalry' with other forms of comic narrative, and its decline in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Mock-heroic poetry is one of the most characteristic genres of English neoclassicism in the eighteenth century. Derived from French models, the mock-heroic became something more than merely a parody of the serious epic: relieved of its gravity, it was nevertheless a legitimate and independent form of epic poetry. This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre. In the first part, Ulrich Broich shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses - epic, comedy, parody, satire and occasional poetry. The 'polyphonic' genre which emerges from this analysis stands in ironic contrast to the neoclassical ideal of decorum in a harmonious unity of discourse and form. The second part traces the history of mock-heroic poetry: its foreign sources, its beginnings in England, the 'rivalry' with other forms of comic narrative, and its decline in the second half of the eighteenth century.