The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin

by Edited by David S. Ferris

• ISBN13: 9780521793292
• ISBN10: 0521793297
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the work and thought of the highly influential twentieth-century critic and theorist Walter Benjamin. The volume provides examinations of the different aspects of Benjamin's work that have had a significant effect on contemporary critical and historical thought. Topics discussed by experts in the field include Benjamin's relation to the avant-garde movements of his time, the form of the work of art, his theories on language and mimesis, modernity, his relation to Brecht and the Frankfurt School, his significance and relevance to modern cultural studies, his formative interpretation of Romanticism, and his autobiographical writings. The volume is aimed at readers who may be coming to Benjamin for the first time or who have some knowledge of Benjamin but would like to know more about the issues and concepts central to his work. Additional material includes a guide to further reading and a chronology.

Table of Contents

List of short titles and abbreviations

Walter Benjamin: a chronology

Introduction: Reading Benjamin David S. Ferris

1. Walter Benjamin and the European avant-garde Michael Jennings

2. Art forms Jan Mieszkowski

3. Language and mimesis in the work of Walter Benjamin Beatrice Hanssen

4. Walter Benjamin's concept of cultural history Howard Caygill

5. Benjamin's Modernity Andrew Benjamin

6. Benjamin and psychoanalysis Sarah Ley Roff

7. Ghostly medium: Romanticism and its possibilities Rebecca Comay

8. Body politics: dialectical materialism between Brecht and the Frankfurt School Rainer Nagele

9. Method and time: Benjamin's dialectical images Max Penksy

10. Benjamin's phantasmagoria: The Arcades Margaret Cohen

11. Acts of self-portraiture: Benjamin's confessional and literary writings Gerhard Richter

Guide to further reading.