The Real and the Sacred


Book Description

The figure of Jesus appears as a character in dozens of nineteenth-century novels, including works by Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and others. The Real and the Sacred focuses in particular on two fiction genres: the Jesus redivivus tale and the Jesus novel. In the former, Christ makes surprise visits to earth, from rural Flanders (Balzac) and Muscovy (Turgenev) to the bustling streets of Paris (Flaubert), Seville (Dostoevsky), Berlin, and Boston. In the latter, the historical Jesus wanders through the picturesque towns and plains of first-century Galilee and Judea, attracting followers and enemies. In short, authors subjected Christ, the second person of the Christian trinity, to the realist norms of secular fiction. Thus the Jesus of nineteenth-century fiction was both situated within a specific time and place, whether ancient or modern, and positioned before the gaze of increasingly daring literary portraitists. The highest artistic challenge for authors was to paint, using mere words, a faithful picture of Jesus in all his humanity. The incongruity of a sacred figure inhabiting secular literary forms nevertheless tested the limits of modern realist style no less than the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. The international “quest of the historical Jesus” has been amply documented within the context of nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. Yet there has been no broad-based comparative study devoted to the depiction of Jesus in prose fiction over the same time period. The Real and the Sacred offers a comprehensive survey of this body of fiction, examining both the range of its Christ types and the varying formal means through which these types were represented. The nineteenth century—despite forecasts of God's death at the time—not only revived older Christ types but also witnessed the rise of new ones, including le Christ proletaire, the Mormon Christ, the Buddhist Christ, and the Tolstoyan Christ. Novelists played a crucial role in the invention and popularization of the historical Jesus in particular, one of modernity's major figures. These pioneering works of fiction, written by authors of diverse religious and national backgrounds, laid the formal groundwork for an enduring fascination with the historical Jesus in later fiction and film, from Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The book is enhanced by a gallery of illustrations of the historical Jesus as depicted by nineteenth-century artists.




From the Greeks to the Greens


Book Description

Ranging from Hellenistic pastoral to the contemporary counterculture activities of the "Greens," the essays in this volume underscore the complexity of simplicity. Whether the simple life is located in a culture's past or in its future, in a secluded corner or beyond society's boundaries, it remains a fascinating subject for discussion.




Marx's General


Book Description

"Written with brio, warmth, and historical understanding, this is the best biography of one of the most attractive inhabitants of Victorian England, Marx's friend, partner, and political heir."—Eric Hobsbawm Friedrich Engels is one of the most intriguing and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family, he spent his life enjoying the comfortable existence of a Victorian gentleman; yet he was at the same time the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless political tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so that Karl Marx could have the freedom to write. Although his contributions are frequently overlooked, Engels's grasp of global capital provided an indispensable foundation for communist doctrine, and his account of the Industrial Revolution, The Condition of the Working Class in England, remains one of the most haunting and brutal indictments of capitalism's human cost. Drawing on a wealth of letters and archives, acclaimed historian Tristram Hunt plumbs Engels's intellectual legacy and shows us how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his exuberant personal life with his radical political philosophy. This epic story of devoted friendship, class compromise, ideological struggle, and family betrayal at last brings Engels out from the shadow of his famous friend and collaborator.







Understanding Isak Dinesen


Book Description

Shadows on the Grass, Winter's Tales, Last Tales, Anecdotes of Destiny, and Ehrengard, Brantly explores the clues, details, and subplots in texts that critics often describe as puzzles and labyrinths. Brantly reveals the thought and care that Dinesen devoted to the construction of her stories, her expansive knowledge of world literature, and the great pleasure awaiting readers as they unravel the mysteries embedded in her texts."--BOOK JACKET.




The First Modern Jew


Book Description

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.




Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus


Book Description

Was Jesus the founder of Christianity or a teacher of Judaism? When 19th-century German religious reformer Abraham Geiger argued the latter, he began a debate that continues to this day. Here Susannah Heschel traces the genesis of Geiger's contention and examines the reaction to it within Christian theology. 3 photos.




Inciting Laughter


Book Description




The Frock-Coated Communist


Book Description

Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable, middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman. Yet Engels was also the co-founder of international communism - the philosophy which in the 20th century came to control one third of the human race. He was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless party tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so Karl Marx could write Das Kapital. Tristram Hunt relishes the diversity and exuberance of Engels's era: how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy. Set against the backdrop of revolutionary Europe and industrializing England - of Manchester mills, Paris barricades, and East End strikes - it is a story of devoted friendship, class compromise, ideological struggle, and family betrayal.




German Classics: 19th & 20th Century


Book Description

German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is a collection of carefully selected masterpieces of German literature in last two centuries. The most representative German writers of each period are brought together and represented by their best and finest works from the great epoch of Classicism and Romanticism to early modern literature of twentieth century: Vol. I & II: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Vol. III: Friedrich von Schiller Vol. IV: Jean Paul; Wilhelm von Humboldt; August Wilhelm Schlegel; Friedrich Schlegel; Novalis; Friedrich Hölderlin; Ludwig Tieck; Heinrich von Kleist Vol. V: Friedrich Schleiermacher; Johann Gottlieb Fichte; Friedrich Wilhem Joseph von Schelling; Ludgwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano; Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm; Ernst Moritz Arndt; Theodor Kürner; Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf; Ludwig Uhland; Joseph von Eichendorff; Adalbert von Chamisso; Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann; Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué; Wilhelm Hauff; Friedrich Rükert; August von Platen-Hallermund Vol. VI: Heinrich Heine; Franz Grillparzer; Ludwig van Beethoven Vol. VII: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Bettina von Arnim; Karl Lebrecht Immermann; Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow; Anastasius Grün, Nikolaus Lenau; Eduard Mörike; Annette Elizabeth von Droste-Hülshoff; Ferdinand Freiligrath; Moritz Graf von Strachwitz; Georg Herwegh; Emanual Geigel Vol. VIII: Berthold Auerbach; Jeremias Gotthelf; Fritz Reuter; Adalbert Stifter; Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl Vol. IX: Friedrich Hebbel; Otto Ludwig Vol. X: Prince Otto von Bismarck; Count Helmuth von Moltke; Ferdinand Lassalle Vol. XI: Friedrich Spielhagen; Theodor Storm; Wilhelm Raabe Vol. XII: Gustav Freytag; Theodor Fontane Vol. XII: Helene Böhlau; Clara Viebig; Eduard von Keyserling; Thomas Mann; Ludwig Thoma; Rudolf Hans Bartsch; Emil Strauss; Hermann Hesse; Ernst Zahn; Jakob Schaffner Vol. XIV: Jakob Wassermann; Bernhard Kellermann; Max Halbe; Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Arthur Schnitzler; Frank Wedekind; Ernst Hardt




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