Karl S. Guthke

Karl Siegfried Guthke

An illustrated historical study of gendered personifications of death in Western art, literature, and culture.

A Cultural History in Art and Literature

The Gender of Death

Standardstoff an Schule und Hochschule. 'Emilia Galotti', 'Kabale und Liebe' und 'Maria Magdalena' gelten als Paradebeispiele für das bürgerliche Trauerspiel. Was zeichnet die zentrale literarische Gattung des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus? Die 6. Auflage liefert einen aktualisierten Überblick.

Das deutsche bürgerliche Trauerspiel

Reclams Einzelinterpretationen erschließen wichtige Werke der deutschen Literatur. Sie sind von Fachwissenschaftlern verfasst und eignen sich zur Vorbereitung von Referaten und Hausarbeiten. Sie enthalten eine Werkinterpretation und Literaturhinweise zur weiterführenden Lektüre.

Reclam Interpretation

Interpretation. Friedrich Schiller: Kabale und Liebe

Sammlung Metzler, 65

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Kulturgeschichte eines Gedankenexperiments in der Literatur

Lebenszeit ohne Ende

Whether Goethe actually cried "More light!" on his deathbed, or whether Conrad Hilton checked out of this world after uttering "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub," last words, regardless of authenticity, have long captured the imagination of Western society. In this playfully serious investigation based on factual accounts, anecdotes, literary works, and films, Karl Guthke explores the cultural importance of those words spoken at the border between this world and the next. The exit lines of both famous and ordinary people embody for us a sense of drama and truthfulness and reveal much about our thoughts on living and dying. Why this interest in last words? Presenting statements from such figures as Socrates, Nathan Hale, Marie Antoinette, and Oscar Wilde ("I am dying as I have lived, beyond my means"), Guthke examines our fascination in terms of our need for closure, our desire for immortality, and our attraction to the mystique of death scenes. The author considers both authentic and invented final statements as he looks at the formation of symbols and legends and their function in our culture. Last words, handed down from generation to generation like cultural heirlooms, have a good chance of surviving in our collective memory. They are shown to epitomize a life, convey a sense of irony, or play to an audience, as in the case of the assassinated Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who is said to have died imploring journalists: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Variations on a Theme in Cultural History

Last Words

A groundbreaking study examining major literary treatments of the idea of earthly immortality, throwing into relief fascinating instances of human self-awareness over the past 300 years.

A Thought Experiment in Literature from Swift to Houellebecq

Life Without End

In this fascinating collection of essays Harvard Emeritus Professor Karl S. Guthke examines the ways in which, for European scholars and writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, world-wide geographical exploration led to an exploration of the self. Guthke explains how in the age of Enlightenment and beyond intellectual developments were fuelled by excitement about what Ulrich Im Hof called "the grand opening-up of the wide world”, especially of the interior of the non-European continents. This outward turn was complemented by a fascination with "the world within” as anthropology and ethnology focused on the humanity of the indigenous populations of far-away lands – an interest in human nature that suggested a way for Europeans to understand themselves, encapsulated in Gauguin’s Tahitian rumination "What are we?” The essays in the first half of the book discuss first- or second-hand, physical or mental encounters with the exotic lands and populations beyond the supposed cradle of civilisation. The works of literature and documents of cultural life featured in these essays bear testimony to the crossing not only of geographical, ethnological, and cultural borders but also of borders of a variety of intellectual activities and interests. The second section examines the growing interest in astronomy and the engagement with imagined worlds in the universe, again with a view to understanding homo sapiens, as compared now to the extra-terrestrials that were confidently assumed to exist. The final group of essays focuses on the exploration of the landscape of what was called "the universe within”; featuring, among a variety of other texts, Schiller’s plays The Maid of Orleans and William Tell, these essays observe and analyse what Erich Heller termed "The Artist’s Journey into the Interior.” This collection, which travels from the interior of continents to the interior of the mind, is itself a set of explorations that revel in the discovery of what was half-hidden in language. Written by a scholar of international repute, it is eye-opening reading for all those with an interest in the literary and cultural history of (and since) the Enlightenment.

Karl S. Guthke

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