Pretexts for Writing – German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy

Pretexts for WritingGerman Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy\nAuthor(s): Sen M. Williams\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S., United States\nImprint: Bucknell University Press,U.S.\nISBN-13: 9781684480531, 978-1684480531\nSynopsis\nAround 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how Europeanand, above all, GermanRomanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in contine.