The art of German Expressionism captures the birth pangs of 20th-century modernity in all its contrasts and conflicts. With continuous eruptions, from 1905 to 1918, Expressionism exploded the reigning artistic practices from the 19th century in painting, in music -- and in literature, where a heady intellectualism combined with dramatic gesture and urgent proclamations to forge a new, viscerally forceful style. This volume of new essays presents the dynamic and volatile movement of this literature: its philosophical origins, its thematic preoccupations, and its divergent stylistic manifestations in prose, poetry, and drama by writers whose common bond is intensity and whose lines on the page read like the gouges of a woodcut: Georg Kaiser, Walter Hasenclever, and Ernst Toller in drama, Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn in poetry, Alfred Doblin, Carl Einstein, and Franz Kafka in prose, among many others. Not only major and minor literary figures are featured here, but also the journals, the exhibitions, the cafe meeting places, the scandals and controversies that accompanied the art of literary Expressionism.
Combining highly focused analysis of individual works with comprehensive overviews of the contexts in which they were created -- and of the most up-to-date research -- the essays draw the reader into the complexity of this period of rich artistic ferment. Contributors: Richard T. Gray, Walter Sokel, Rhys W. Williams, Perry Willett, Francis Michael Sharp, James Rolleston, Klaus Weissenberger, Ernst Schurer, Christa Spreizer, Barbara Wright, Sabine Hake.Neil H. Donahue is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Hofstra University.