Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno's Notes to LiteratureThis is the first book-length study of Adorno's philosophical criticism of literature contained in his four-volume Notes to Literature. Rather than relying exclusively on aesthetic concepts inherited from his predecessors in the Western tradition (such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard), Adorno's essays on literature seek to transgress and transcend the conceptual limitations of aesthetic discourse by appropriating a non-conceptual, metaphorical vocabulary borrowed from the literary texts he investigates. Adorno's interpretations of literature mobilize an alternative subterranean, primarily essayistic and fragmentary discourse on language and history that eludes the categories that tend to predominate his thinking in his major work, Aesthetic Theory. |
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Adorno and Horkheimer Adorno claims Adorno suggests Adorno’s essays aesthetic experience Aesthetic Theory Alexander García Düttmann Alexandrianism allegory anti-Semitic art of transition artworks Baudelaire becomes Beschwörung Bildung bourgeois classicism concept critique culture dialectic of enlightenment Eichendorff Eichendorff's poetry element enigmatic enigmaticalness essay as form essayistic expression Faust figure Frankfurt am Main George German language Goethe Goethe’s Hegel Heidegger Heine Heine’s Heine's poetry Heinrich Heine Hölderlin Humanität idea ideal interpretation inversion Iphigenie Jewish Karl Kraus Kraus’s linguistic literary criticism logic Lukács lyric poetry means mimesis mimetic modern nature negative Notes to Literature notion object Odysseus paradoxical perspective philosophy poem poet poetic political possible precisely prose Rauschen reading relation rhetorical Romantic Rudolf Borchardt signifies simply speak speech Stefan George structure style Suhrkamp talk technique term Theodor Theodor W thinking thought tion tradition trans translation truth understanding Walter Benjamin WB GS WB SW word wound writings