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"Elegance and intelligence meet on virtually every page of this intriguing book. I was persuaded by the perspicacity and inventiveness of the individual chapters and even more by the cumulative effect of the readings [of Lessing, Kant, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Musil, Kafka, Trakl, and Benjamin]."--Ian Balfour, York University.
"Written with enticing rhetoric and in an often-delightful polemical mode, Complex Pleasure vacillates between the temptation of a straight definition, whose premises are continuously undermined, and the pressure of literary texts, which emerges behind every theoretical demonstration. Thus, the book develops in the tension of the two languages, and keeps reflecting on itself, as it reflects the aesthetic experience."--Literary Research / Recherche Litteraire
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About the author
Stanley Corngold is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author, most recently, of Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form and Borrowed Lives (with Irene Giersing.)
Summary
"Complex Pleasure" deals with questions of literary feeling in eight major German writers: Lessing, Kant, Hslderlin, Nietzsche, Musil, Kafka, Trakl, and Benjamin.
Additional text
"Written with enticing rhetoric and in an often-delightful polemical mode, Complex Pleasure vacillates between the temptation of a straight definition, whose premises are continuously undermined, and the pressure of literary texts, which emerges behind every theoretical demonstration. Thus, the book develops in the tension of the two languages, and keeps reflecting on itself, as it reflects the aesthetic experience."
