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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin
  • Cited by 26
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2012
Print publication year:
2008
Online ISBN:
9780511793257
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511793257
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, English Literature: General Interest, Literary Theory, European Literature, European Studies
Series:
Cambridge Introductions to Literature
Information

Book description

For students of modern criticism and theory, Walter Benjamin's writings have become essential reading. His analyses of photography, film, language, history, allegory, material culture, the poet Charles Baudelaire, and his vast examination of the social, political and historical significance of the Arcades of nineteenth-century Paris have left an enduring and important critical legacy. This volume examines in detail a substantial selection of his important critical writings on these topics from 1916 to 1940 and outlines his life in pre-war Germany, his association with the Frankfurt School, and the dissemination of his ideas and methodologies into a variety of academic disciplines since his death. David Ferris traces the development of Benjamin's key critical concepts and provides students with an accessible overview of the life, work and thought of one of the twentieth-century's most important literary and cultural critics.

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Contents

Contents
References
Guide to further reading
Works
Gesammelte Schriften. 7 vols. Ed. Tiedemann, Rolf and Schweppenhäuser, Hermann. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972 Google Scholar–89.
English
The Arcades Project. Trans. Eiland, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999 Google Scholar.
Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Zohn, Harry. London: New Left Books, 1973 Google Scholar.
Illuminations. Ed. Arendt, Hannah. Trans. Zohn, Harry. New York: Schocken Books, 1969 Google Scholar.
Moscow Diary. Trans. Sieburth, Richard. Ed. Smith, Gary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986 Google Scholar.
One-Way Street and Other Writings. Trans. Jephcott, Edward and Shorter, K.. London: New Left Books, 1979 Google Scholar.
Origin of the German Tragic Drama. Trans. Osborne, John. London: New Left Books, 1977 Google Scholar.
Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Trans. Jephcott, Edmund. Ed. Demetz, Peter. New York: Schocken, 1986 Google Scholar.
Selected Writings1913–1926. Vol. 1. Ed. Bullock, Marcus and Jennings, Michael W.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996 Google Scholar.
Selected Writings1927–1934. Vol. 2. Trans. Livingstone, Rodneyet al. Ed. Jennings, Michael W., Eiland, Howard, and Smith, Gary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999 Google Scholar.
Selected Writings1925–1938. Vol. 3. Trans. Jephcott, Edmund, Eiland, Howardet al. Ed. Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 Google Scholar.
Selected Writings1938–1940. Vol. 4. Trans. Jephcott, Edmundet al. Ed. Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003 Google Scholar.
Understanding Brecht. Trans. Bostock, Anna. London: New Left Books, 1973 Google Scholar.
Letters
Adorno and Benjamin: The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940. Ed. Lonitz, Henry. Trans. Walker, Nicholas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999 Google Scholar.
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1920–1940. Ed. Scholem, Gershom and Adorno, Theodor W.. Trans. Jacobson, Manfred R. and Jacobson, Evelyn M.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 Google Scholar.
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–1940. Trans. Smith, Gary and Lefevre, André. New York: Schocken Books, 1989 Google Scholar.
Gesammelte Briefe. 6 vols. Ed. Gödde, Christoph and Lonitz, Henri. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995 Google Scholar–2000.
Selected secondary sources
Buck-Morss, Susan. The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute. New York: Free Press, 1977 Google Scholar. Examines the Frankfurt School and Benjamin's relation to it from the perspective of its method of negative dialectics.
Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: Harper and Row, 1968 Google Scholar. An introduction to the various intellectual, artistic, social, and political movements that developed during the Weimar period in Germany.
Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research, 1923–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 Google Scholar. Good introduction to the history of the Frankfurt School and its development.
Laqueur, Walter Z.Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement. New York: Basic Books, 1962 Google Scholar. Provides a history of the various youth movements that arose in Germany between 1896 and 1933.
Norton, Robert. Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002 Google Scholar. Definitive account of Stefan George and a history of the figures associated with his circle.
Biography
Brodersen, Momme. Walter Benjamin: A Biography. London: Verso, 1996 Google Scholar. A full-length biography of Benjamin, useful but whets the appetite for a more complete biography with better organization.
Eiland, Howard, and Jennings, Michael. The Author as Producer: A Life of Walter Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007 Google Scholar. First full-length critical biography in English. Situates critical introductions to Benjamin's major works within a full account of his life.
Leslie, Esther. Walter Benjamin. London: Reaktion Books, 2007 Google Scholar. First biography in English to incorporate fully the German editions of Benjamin's collected writings and letters. Links his personal history to a detailed account of his intellectual development and its social context.
Missac, Pierre. Walter Benjamin's Passages. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995 Google Scholar. An account of Benjamin's life interwoven with topics and themes from his works told by someone who knew him during his final years in Paris.
Scholem, Gershom. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981 Google Scholar. Account of Benjamin's life through Scholem's eyes. Tends to emphasize the Jewish and Messianic aspect of Benjamin's writings.
Witte, Bernd. Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography. Trans. Rolleston, James. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991 Google Scholar. An interpretative biography that emphasizes Benjamin's works and ideas as well as his intellectual contexts.
Selected criticism (books only)
Benjamin, Andrew. Ed. Adorno and Benjamin: Problems of Modernity. London: Routledge, 1989 Google Scholar. Collection of essays on questions relating to the concept of modernity in both Benjamin and Adorno. Essays treat the enlightenment, modernism, the postmodern, language, feminism, Baudelaire, and Jewish motifs.
Benjamin, Andrew Ed. Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience. Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2000 Google Scholar. Collection of essays organized around the philosophical significance of Benjamin's work. Essays treat destruction, violence, tradition, experience, politics, language, time, the work of art essay.
Benjamin, Andrew Ed. Walter Benjamin and Art. London: Continuum, 2005 Google Scholar. Collection of essays on the aesthetic (and its relation to politics), aura, music, revolution, the technological, and photography.
Benjamin, Andrew Ed. Walter Benjamin and History. London: Continuum, 2005 Google Scholar. Collection of essays examining the image, photography, time, architecture, modernity, tradition, and the messianic in relation to Benjamin's concept of history.
Buci-Glucksmann, Christine. Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity. London: Sage Publications, 1994 Google Scholar. Examines the significance of a Baroque reason for the problems that arise within the representation of modernity, namely alienation, melancholy, and nostalgia. Discusses Benjamin's analysis of the Baroque in the context of Nietzsche, Adorno, Musil, Barthes, and Lacan.
Buck-Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989 Google Scholar. An inventive reconstruction of Benjamin's fragmentary last work, The Arcades Project. Published before this work became available in translation.
Cadava, Eduardo. Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 Google Scholar. Focuses on Benjamin's thought and writing through the prism offered by the place of photography in his work.
Caygill, Howard. Walter Benjamin: The Color of Experience. London: Routledge, 1998 Google Scholar. Extensive examination of the concept of experience and especially visual experience in Benjamin's writings.
Cohen, Margaret. Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris Surrealist Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993 Google Scholar. Unsurpassed and comprehensive account of Benjamin and surrealism within the context of Parisian culture and history during the 1930s.
Eagleton, Terry. Walter Benjamin: or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism. London: New Left Books, 1981 Google Scholar. An attempt to rescue Benjamin for contemporary Marxist criticism.
Fenves, Peter. Arresting Language: From Leibniz to Benjamin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001 Google Scholar. Examines how Benjamin's writings on language belong to a history in which language is understood as an interruption of continuous processes and procedures.
Ferris, David. Ed. Walter Benjamin: Theoretical Questions. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993 Google Scholar. Collection of essays on theoretical aspects of Benjamin's works. Essays on aura, history, the poetic, presentation, language and the autobiographical, and violence, as well as his reading of Romanticism.
Ferris, David Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 CrossRef | Google Scholar. Collection of essays examining the avant-garde, art forms, language and mimesis, cultural history, modernity, psychoanalysis, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, the phantasmagorical, and the autobiographical.
Fischer, Gerhard. “With the Sharpened Axe of Reason”: Approaches to Walter Benjamin. Oxford: Berg, 1996 Google Scholar. Collection of essays by Australian and European critics on modernity, gender, criticism and literature, and performance and theatricality in Benjamin's writings.
Gilloch, Graeme. Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996 Google Scholar. Focuses on the place of the city within Benjamin's thought. Explores surrealism and modernity as well as Marx and Freud in relation to Benjamin.
Gilloch, GraemeCritical Constellations. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002 Google Scholar. Thematic account of Benjamin's writings. Emphasizes the relation between fragmentation and constellation.
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, and Marrinan, Michael. Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003 Google Scholar. Collection of short essays that respond to the question of Benjamin's contemporary significance for a range of disciplines in the humanities as well as some of the social sciences.
Hanssen, Beatrice. Walter Benjamin's Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 Google Scholar. Focuses on Benjamin's Origin of the German Tragic Drama and examines the complexities of his understanding of history as developed in this work.
Hanssen, BeatriceEd. Walter Benjamin and The Arcades Project. London: Routledge, 2006 Google Scholar. Collection of essays by American and British critics on issues and concepts in Benjamin's uncompleted work on the Paris Arcades.
Hanssen, Beatrice, and Benjamin, Andrew. Walter Benjamin and Romanticism. London: Continuum, 2002 Google Scholar. Collection of essays by American, British and European critics on different aspects of Romanticism examined by Benjamin in his early formative writings.
Jacobs, Carol. In the Language of Walter Benjamin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 Google Scholar. Close readings that examine the performance of language in Benjamin's autobiographical writings as well as his essays on language and translation.
Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971 Google Scholar. Contains the earliest account in English of Benjamin as a Marxist critic.
Jennings, Michael W.Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987 Google Scholar. Places Benjamin's writings on Baudelaire, the philosophy of history, experience, truth in relation to a theory of criticism.
Lane, Richard J.Walter Benjamin: Writing through the Catastrophe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005 Google Scholar. Examines the relation between philosophy and theology across Benjamin's writings. Analyzes this relation in the German youth movements, the George Circle, and surrealism. Also examines Benjamin's concepts of experience and the work of art as well as his textual practice.
Leslie, Esther. Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism. London: Pluto Press, 2000 Google Scholar. Offers a more political reading of Benjamin in the wake of the theoretical attention given to his works in the 1980s and 1990s.
McCole, John. Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993 Google Scholar. Examines Benjamin's intellectual development while emphasizing an engagement with tradition that can be traced from his early writings. Treats Romanticism, experience, allegory, surrealism, memory, and history.
Mehlman, Jeffrey. Walter Benjamin for Children: An Essay on His Radio Years. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 Google Scholar. An analysis of thirty scripts Benjamin wrote for radio broadcasts between 1929 and 1933 in the context of his larger critical concerns.
Nägele, Rainer. Ed. Benjamin's Ground. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988 Google Scholar. Close textual readings of major aspects of Benjamin's thought. Essays on language, Baudelaire, lyric, and the image.
Nägele, RainerTheatre, Theory, Speculation: Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991 Google Scholar. Extensive analysis of Origin of the German Tragic Drama that traces the consequences of Benjamin's account of how modernity is formed within the Baroque.
Pensky, Max. Melancholy Dialectics. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 Google Scholar. Extensive analysis of melancholy as a central force within Benjamin's writings. Treats modernity, allegory, criticism, and history in his thought.
Richter, Gerhard. Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000 Google Scholar. Examines Benjamin's autobiographical writings and their emphasis on the body and its image as a crucial site for his engagement with political questions and concerns.
Richter, Gerhard Ed. Benjamin's Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002 Google Scholar. Collection of essays that examines Benjamin's contemporary critical significance. Essays by German and American critics on cinema, image, aura, art, history, language, the tragic, The Arcades Project, and Benjamin's concept of the constellation.
Roberts, Julian. Walter Benjamin. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983 Google Scholar. Short general account of Benjamin's writings.
Rochlitz, Rainer. The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin. Trans. Todd, Jane Marie. New York: Guilford, 1996 Google Scholar. Systematic treatment of Benjamin's thought emphasizing his philosophy of language, aesthetic concerns, and historical thought.
Smith, Gary, Ed. On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and Recollections. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988 Google Scholar. Wide range of essays on Benjamin as well as personal recollections. Includes some important essays first published in Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Smith, Gary Ed. Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 Google Scholar. Essays by American and German authors on Benjamin. Essays focus on the concept of progress, the work of art essay, history, materialism, the messianic, and The Arcades Project.
Steinberg, Michael P. Ed. Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996 Google Scholar. Essays on Benjamin's understanding of history, both cultural and philosophical, as well as applications of his historical thought to modern cultural contexts.
Weber, Samuel. Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001 Google Scholar. Locates Benjamin's writings within a transformation of artistic form and experience that marks the transition from a work-based to a media-based model in art and culture.
Weber, SamuelBenjamin's -abilities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008 Google Scholar. Innovative study of a series of key concepts that all share the same suffix in Benjamin's writings. Concepts discussed include impartibility, criticizability, citability, translatability, and reproducibility.
Weigel, Sigrid. Body- and Image-Space: Re-Reading Walter Benjamin. London: Routledge, 1996 CrossRef | Google Scholar. Examines the relation of image and body as a central issue within Benjamin's work. Treats gender, allegory, and the dialectical image, as well as the relation of Foucault and Kristeva to Benjamin's writings.
Wolin, Richard. Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption. Revised edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994 Google Scholar. A broad account of some of the principal questions, issues, and concepts framing Benjamin's critical development.

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