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Erich Auerbach and the Crisis of German Philology

The Humanist Tradition in Peril

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Avihu Zakai

    1. Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

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  • Provides a comprehensive intellectual biography of Erich Auerbach
  • Is the first and only study that fully explains the overarching plan, content and form, of Mimesis as a whole
  • Will appeal to scholars in a wide range of disciplines and sub-disciplines, including philology, history, philosophy, and politics

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 1-17

  3. Erich Auerbach: Life, Times, and Works

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 19-28

  4. Dante and the “Discovery of European Representation of Man”

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 29-36

  5. The Crisis of German Philology: Aryan Philology and the Elimination of the Old Testament

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 37-50

  6. Two Responses to the German Crisis of Philology: Ernst Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 51-58

  7. Exile and Interpretation: The Struggle Against Aryan Philology and Nazi Barbarism

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 59-82

  8. Mimesis: An Apologia for Western Judaeo-Christian Humanist Tradition in an Age of Peril, Tyranny, and Barbarism

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 83-161

  9. Epilogue: Exile, Interpretation, and Alienation

    • Avihu Zakai
    Pages 163-168

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 169-218
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Keywords

About this book

This book analyzes and contextualizes Auerbach’s life and mind in the wide ideological, philological, and historical context of his time, especially the rise of Aryan philology and its eventual triumph with the Nazi Revolution or the Hitler Revolution in Germany of 1933. It deals specifically with his struggle against the premises of Aryan philology, based on völkisch mysticism and Nazi historiography, which eliminated the Old Testament from German Kultur and Volksgeist in particular, and Western culture and civilization in general. It examines in detail his apologia for, or defense and justification of, Western Judaeo-Christian humanist tradition at its gravest existential moment. It discusses Auerbach’s ultimate goal, which was to counter the overt racist tendencies and völkish ideology in Germany, or the belief in the Community of Blood and Fate of the German people, which sharply distinguished between Kultur and civilization and glorified völkisch nationalism over European civilization. The volume includes an analysis of the entire twenty chapters of Auerbach’s most celebrated book:  Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1946.   

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Avihu Zakai

About the author

Avihu Zakai is Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of twelve books, among them Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of History: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, in addition to numerous articles and presentations for scholarly and general audiences. 

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Erich Auerbach and the Crisis of German Philology

  • Book Subtitle: The Humanist Tradition in Peril

  • Authors: Avihu Zakai

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40958-0

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-40957-3Published: 09 September 2016

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-82227-3Published: 22 April 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-40958-0Published: 24 August 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 218

  • Topics: Philology, History of Germany and Central Europe, Language and Literature, Comparative Literature

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