The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin

Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 9
Preface......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 13
List of abbreviations......Page 14
A life displaced......Page 15
1892-1912 Berlin: childhood and school years......Page 16
1912-1917 University, war, and marriage......Page 18
1917-1925 Pursuit of an academic career......Page 22
1925-1933 Critical ambitions......Page 26
1933-1940 Exile in Paris......Page 30
1940 Flight from Europe......Page 33
The student youth movement and the First World War......Page 36
The George School......Page 37
The Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism......Page 38
Marxism and the Frankfurt School......Page 40
\"The Life of Students\" (1914-1915, pub. 1915)......Page 43
\"Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin\" (1914-1915)......Page 47
\"On Language in General and on the Language of Man\" (1916)......Page 50
Suggested further reading......Page 55
\"On the Program of the Coming Philosophy\" (1918)......Page 56
(b) Raising criticism 1919-1925......Page 59
The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (1919, pub. 1920)......Page 61
\"Critique of Violence\" (1921)......Page 66
“Goethe’s Elective Affinities” (1919-1922, pub. 1924-1925)......Page 71
\"The Task of the Translator\" (1921, pub. 1923)......Page 76
Origin of the German Tragic Drama (1924-1925, pub. 1928)......Page 80
Suggested further reading......Page 87
(c) Culture, politics, and criticism 1926-1931......Page 88
One-Way Street (1923-1926, pub. 1928)......Page 89
\"Surrealism. The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia\" (1929)......Page 92
Suggested further reading......Page 95
\"On the Image of Proust\" (1929)......Page 96
\"Theories of German Fascism\" (1930)......Page 98
Suggested further reading......Page 101
\"Karl Kraus\" (pub. 1931)......Page 102
Suggested further reading......Page 104
(d) Media and revolution 1931-1936......Page 105
\"Little History of Photography\" (1931)......Page 106
\"The Author as Producer\" (1934)......Page 110
Suggested further reading......Page 115
\"Franz Kafka. On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death\" (1934)......Page 116
\"The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility\" (1935-1939)......Page 118
Suggested further reading......Page 124
\"The Storyteller\" (1936)......Page 125
(e) History, materialism, and the messianic 1936-1940......Page 128
The Arcades Project (1927-1940; unpublished)......Page 129
(i) Phantasmagoria and commodity fetish......Page 130
(ii) Awakening and the dialectical image......Page 132
Suggested further reading......Page 135
Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Age of High Capitalism (1937-1939)......Page 136
(i) “Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire” (1937-1938)......Page 137
(ii) “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” (February-July 1939)......Page 141
\"On the Concept of History\" (1939-1940)......Page 144
Suggested further reading......Page 149
Translation and early history of reception......Page 150
Political and Marxist-influenced reception......Page 154
Reception in literary and critical theory......Page 155
Benjamin across disciplines and in recent critical approaches......Page 157
3 Works......Page 160
4 Critical reception......Page 161
English......Page 162
Biography......Page 163
Selected criticism (books only)......Page 164
Index......Page 169