Book Cover
E-book
Author Beebee, Thomas O

Title Citation and precedent : conjunctions and disjunctions of German law and literature / Thomas O. Beebee
Published New York : Continuum, ©2012

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 281 pages) : illustrations
Series New directions in German studies ; v. 3
New directions in German studies ; v. 3.
Contents Subsystem or public sphere? -- In search of the invisible precedent : Grimm writes to Savigny -- Kant, codification, and Goethe's elective affinities -- A recursive process : Kafka's law -- and ours -- Walter Benjamin reads the Weimar Constitution -- From Schiller to Schund : Zensur and the canonization of literature -- German literature fights for its rights : a thick description of an incident of Weimar literary culture -- Carl Schmitt and/as Benito Cereno -- Citation as second-order observation : Peter Weiss's The investigation
Summary Among Western literatures, only the German-speaking countries can boast a list of world-class writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, Kleist, Kafka, Schmitt, and Schlink who were trained as legal scholars. Yet this list only hints at the complex interactions between German law and literature. It can be supplemented, for example, with the unique interventions of the legal system into literature, ranging from attempts to save literature from the tidal wave of Schund (pulp fiction) in the early twentieth century to audiences suing theaters over the improper production of classics in the twenty-first. The long list of instances where German literature cites law, or where German law serves literature as a precedent, signal the dream of German culture of a unity of interests and objectives between spheres of activity. Yet the very vitality of this dream stems from real historical and social processes that increasingly autonomize and separate these domains from each other. Beebee examines the history of this dialectical tension through close readings of numerous cases in the modern era, ranging from Grimm to Schmitt
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references
Notes English
Subject Law and literature -- Germany
German literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc
German literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc
Intertextuality.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- German.
Intertextuality
Law and literature
Germany
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781441155801
1441155805
1283380250
9781283380256
1628926848
9781628926842
9786613380258
6613380253
9781628921243
1628921242
9781441169372
1441169377