The Challenge of Belatedness Goethe, Kleist, Hofmannsthal

This work provides a comprehensive examination of the key plays of these three landmark figures in the German literary tradition. The plays selected for review span a century and a half and resist any neat classification according to period concepts, but each is an important work in a Renaissance dramatic movement which may be seen as 'the nucleus of the development of modern drama as a whole.' Each of the works examined here are connected in that they all represent some reworking of established texts of the Western tradition. They also can be seen as having responded to one another as well as the larger literary past. This fascinating book leads to a better understanding of this important, but often neglected aspect of the literature in question. Co-published with McMaster University.