Roger Paulin

Professor Paulin addresses the subject of academic freedom and directs his attention to Germany. He then explores the conflict between state and academic freedom through the struggles of Goethe and the Grimm brothers. It took to the age of Bismarck for the conflict to end and allow professors to teach and conduct research without direct state interference.

Inaugural Lecture, Delivered 9 May 1990

Goethe, The Brothers Grimm, and Academic Freedom

From Goethe to Gundolf: Essays on German Literature and Culture is a collection of Roger Paulin’s groundbreaking essays, spanning the last forty years. The work represents his major research interests of Romanticism and the reception of Shakespeare in Germany, but also explores a broader range of themes, from poetry and the public memorialization of poets to fairy stories - all meticulously researched, yet highly accessible. As a comprehensive examination of German literary history in the period 1700-1900, the collection not only includes accounts of the lives and work of Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, and Gundolf (amongst others), serving to nuance our understanding of these figures in history, but also considers diverse (and often underexplored) topics, from academic freedom to the rise of travel literature. The essays have been reformulated, corrected, and updated to add references to recent works. However, the core foundations of the originals remain, and just as when they were first published, the value of these essays – to researchers, students, and all those who are interested in German literary history – cannot be overstated.

Essays on German Literature and Culture

From Goethe to Gundolf

Jürgen Barkhoff

Gilbert Carr

This volume brings together the proceedings of a symposium to mark the retirement of Eda Sagarra from the Chair of German (founded 1776) at Trinity College Dublin. It addresses the themes of her major research field, the 19th century as an epoch of literary, social and cultural history. The 'difficulties' of cultural memory of an era which - with varying emphases - has been characterized as the century of liberty, of ideologies, of sciences, of historicism or of realism, are examined from a variety of perspectives in the light of postmodern deconstruction of both literature and history.

Germanistische Tagung zum 65. Geburtstag von Eda Sagarra im August 1998. Mit einem Vorwort von Wolfgang Frühwald

Das schwierige 19. Jahrhundert

Shakespeare im 18. Jahrhundert

This is the first full-scale biography, in any language, of a towering figure in German and European Romanticism: August Wilhelm Schlegel whose life, 1767 to 1845, coincided with its inexorable rise. As poet, translator, critic and oriental scholar, Schlegel's extraordinarily diverse interests and writings left a vast intellectual legacy, making him a foundational figure in several branches of knowledge. He was one of the last thinkers in Europe able to practise as well as to theorise, and to attempt to comprehend the nature of culture without being forced to be a narrow specialist. With his brother Friedrich, for example, Schlegel edited the avant-garde Romantic periodical Athenaeum; and he produced with his wife Caroline a translation of Shakespeare, the first metrical version into any foreign language. Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature were a defining force for Coleridge and for the French Romantics. But his interests extended to French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literature, as well to the Greek and Latin classics, and to Sanskrit. August Wilhelm Schlegel is the first attempt to engage with this totality, to combine an account of Schlegel’s life and times with a critical evaluation of his work and its influence. Through the study of one man's rich life, incorporating the most recent scholarship, theoretical approaches, and archival resources, while remaining easily accessible to all readers, Paulin has recovered the intellectual climate of Romanticism in Germany and traced its development into a still-potent international movement. The extraordinarily wide scope and variety of Schlegel's activities have hitherto acted as a barrier to literary scholars, even in Germany. In Roger Paulin, whose career has given him the knowledge and the experience to grapple with such an ambitious project, Schlegel has at last found a worthy exponent.

Roger Paulin

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