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Zusatztext Both students and scholars of 18th and early 19th-century German literature! as well as anyone interested in modern notions of art and improvisation will benefit highly from this erudite and clearly written study! which expands on Luhmann's descriptive and avowedly value-free! sociological theory of art and makes it accessible to a wider audience. By including in the discussion also an opponent of systems theory! Jacques Derrida! who insisted on the 'incalculability of the incalculable' and on openness for the advent of 'the other' (19-29)! Landgraf contributes to current debates on ideas of freedom and the role of art and/as improvisation in society! inviting our participation. Informationen zum Autor Edgar Landgraf is Professor of German in the Department of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages at Bowling Green State University, USA. He is the author of Improvisation as Art: Conceptual Challenges, Historical Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2011). Klappentext Improvisation as Art traces how modernity's emphasis on inventiveness has changed the meaning of improvisation; and how the ideals and laws that led improvisation to be banned from "high art" in the eighteenth century simultaneously enabled the inventive reintegration of improvisation into modernism. After an in-depth exploration of contemporary theoretical contentions surrounding improvisation, Landgraf examines how the new emphasis on inventiveness affects the understanding of improvisation in the emerging aesthetic and anthropological discourses of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He first focuses on accounts of improvisational performances by Moritz, Goethe, and Fernow and reads them alongside the aesthetics of autonomy as it develops at the same time. In its second half, the book investigates how the problem of "planning" art receives a different treatment in German Romanticism. The final chapter focuses on the writings of Heinrich von Kleist where improvisation presents a central aesthetic principle. Kleist's figurations of improvisation recognize the anthropological predicament of the self in modern society and the social constraints that invite and often force individuals to improvise.Traces how the ideals that led improvisation to be banned from "high art" in the eighteenth century enabled the inventive reintegration of improvisation into modernism. Zusammenfassung Improvisation as Art traces how modernity's emphasis on inventiveness has changed the meaning of improvisation; and how the ideals and laws that led improvisation to be banned from "high art" in the eighteenth century simultaneously enabled the inventive reintegration of improvisation into modernism. After an in-depth exploration of contemporary theoretical contentions surrounding improvisation, Landgraf examines how the new emphasis on inventiveness affects the understanding of improvisation in the emerging aesthetic and anthropological discourses of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He first focuses on accounts of improvisational performances by Moritz, Goethe, and Fernow and reads them alongside the aesthetics of autonomy as it develops at the same time. In its second half, the book investigates how the problem of "planning" art receives a different treatment in German Romanticism. The final chapter focuses on the writings of Heinrich von Kleist where improvisation presents a central aesthetic principle. Kleist's figurations of improvisation recognize the anthropological predicament of the self in modern society and the social constraints that invite and often force individuals to improvise. Inhaltsverzeichnis AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: On Conceptualizing Improvisation1. Performance, Inventiveness and Improvisation: Theoretical Contentions1.1 Derrida's Inventiveness1.2 Calculating Incalculability: The Neocybernetic Alternative1.3 From Iteration to Improvisation2. Ind...
