Fairy Tales: Dramolettes

Fairy Tales: Dramolettes PDF Author: Robert Walser
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224902
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
Three mini-plays by the German wunderkind and asylum-dweller. Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the Swiss writer Robert Walser. Narrated in Walser's inimitable, playful language, these theatrical pieces overturn traditional notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into metatheater, even metareflections. Snow White forgives the evil queen for trying to kill her, Cinderella doubts her prince and enjoys being hated by her evil stepsisters; the Fairy Tale itself is a character who encourages her to stay within the confines of the story. Sleeping Beauty, the royal family, and its retainers are not happy about being woken from their sleep by an absurd, unpretentious, Walser-like hero. Mary and Joseph are taken aback by what lies in store for their baby Jesus.

Fairy Tales: Dramolettes

Fairy Tales: Dramolettes PDF Author: Robert Walser
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224902
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
Three mini-plays by the German wunderkind and asylum-dweller. Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the Swiss writer Robert Walser. Narrated in Walser's inimitable, playful language, these theatrical pieces overturn traditional notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into metatheater, even metareflections. Snow White forgives the evil queen for trying to kill her, Cinderella doubts her prince and enjoys being hated by her evil stepsisters; the Fairy Tale itself is a character who encourages her to stay within the confines of the story. Sleeping Beauty, the royal family, and its retainers are not happy about being woken from their sleep by an absurd, unpretentious, Walser-like hero. Mary and Joseph are taken aback by what lies in store for their baby Jesus.

The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales

The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales PDF Author: Jack Zipes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199689822
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 757

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Book Description
This Oxford companion provides an authoritative reference source for fairy tales, exploring the tales themselves, both ancient and modern, the writers who wrote and reworked them and related topics such as film, art, opera and even advertising.

Robert Walser

Robert Walser PDF Author: Samuel Frederick
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810137143
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
The Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) is now recognized as one of the most important European authors of the modernist period, having garnered high praise from such prominent voices as Susan Sontag, W. G. Sebald, and J. M. Coetzee. Robert Walser: A Companion is the first comprehensive guide to Walser’s work in English. The twelve essays in this collection examine Walser’s literary output, historical milieu, and idiosyncratic writing process, addressing aspects of his biography; discussing the various genres in which he wrote (the novel, short prose, drama, lyric poetry, and letters); and analyzing his best-known novels and short stories alongside lesser-known but no less fascinating poems, plays, and prose pieces. An essential addition to the scholarship about this eccentric, prolific, and influential writer’s work, Robert Walser: A Companion will be of interest both to established scholars and to those coming to Walser for the first time.

Nocturnals

Nocturnals PDF Author: Bradford Morrow
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504059301
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
This spring 2019 edition of Bard College’s literary journal explores the fascination and mystery of night through stories, poems, essays, and memoirs. Scheherazade famously spun stories for a thousand and one nights in order to sustain her life. In recognition of how vital it is to voice our own stories, the stellar works collected here—including entries by Sallie Tisdale, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, and many others—address our myriad experiences from dusk to daybreak. In this volume, readers will encounter the monster of Kowloon, which relies on the imaginations of children in order to exist. Three men embark on a hallucinatory journey into the snowy pitch-dark night of the soul. Purgatory can be found here, along with ghosts, alternative universes, an East Village bar that doubles as a portal to another life, and a personal chronicle of a visit to Burning Man in Black Rock Desert. Also included are the nightbird Nycticorax, musical nocturnes, night thoughts at solstice, wheeling galaxies, and the cosmos itself. The pioneering nocturnal photography of George Shiras is celebrated in these pages, and the dichotomous world of night versus day in equatorial Uganda is observed by an ethnographic eye.

Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature

Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature PDF Author: Corey McCall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351592963
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This collection features original essays that examine Walter Benjamin’s and Theodor Adorno’s essays and correspondence on literature. Taken together, the essays present the view that these two monumental figures of 20th-century philosophy were not simply philosophers who wrote about literature, but that they developed their philosophies in and through their encounters with literature. Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature is divided into three thematic sections. The first section contains essays that directly demonstrate the ways in which literature enriched the thinking of Benjamin and Adorno. It explores themes that are recognized to be central to their thinking—mimesis, the critique of historical progress, and the loss and recovery of experience—through their readings of literary authors such as Baudelaire, Beckett, and Proust. The second section continues the trajectory of the first by bringing together four essays on Benjamin’s and Adorno’s reading of Kafka, whose work helped them develop a distinctive critique of and response to capitalism. The third and final section focuses more intently on the question of what it means to gain authentically critical insight into a literary work. The essays examine Benjamin’s response to specific figures, including Georg Büchner, Robert Walser, and Julien Green, whose work he sees as neglected, undigested, or misunderstood. This book offers a unique examination of two pivotal 20th-century philosophers through the lens of their shared experiences with literature. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars across philosophy, literature, and German studies.

Comedies

Comedies PDF Author: Robert Walser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780857424693
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book brings English-language readers works by Walser in a rare form: dramolette. Few writers have ever experienced such a steady rise in their reputation and public profile as Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) has seen in recent years. As more of his previously little-known work has been translated into English, readers have discovered a unique writer whose off-kilter sensibility and innovations in form are perfectly suited to our fragmented, distracted, bewildering era. The short plays presented here, inspired by the German theater Walser enjoyed in his youth, while never meant to be performed, present scenes, characters, and situations that comment on the brutality of fairy tales, the impossibilities of love, the dark fate of the Christ child (and Walser himself), and more. At the same time, like all of Walser's work they are shot through with a humor that is wholly genuine despite its shades of darkness. Gathering all of Walser's plays, as well as his later, fragmentary dramatic writings, Comedies will be celebrated by the many devoted fans of this lately rediscovered master.

Clairvoyant of the Small

Clairvoyant of the Small PDF Author: Susan Bernofsky
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300220642
Category : Authors, Swiss
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
The first English-language biography of one of the great literary talents of the twentieth century, written by his award-winning translator"Bernofsky takes us into the heart of an artist's life/work struggles, brilliantly illuminating Walser's exquisite sensibility and uncompromising radical innovations, while deftly tracking how his life gradually came apart at the seams. A tragic and intimate portrait."--Amy Sillman "Robert Walser is the perfect pathetic poet: pithy, awkward, drinks too much, sibling rivalrous, ambitious, broke, and mentally ill. Was he proto queer or trans, this red headed writer who next to Gertrude Stein might be the most influential writer of our moment? Riveting and heart-breaking, this biography kept me drunk for days."--Eileen Myles The great Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser lived eccentrically on the fringes of society, shocking his Berlin friends by enrolling in butler school and later developing an urban-nomad lifestyle in the Swiss capital, Bern, before checking himself into a psychiatric clinic. A connoisseur of power differentials, his pronounced interest in everything inconspicuous and modest--social outcasts and artists as well as the impoverished, marginalized, and forgotten--prompted W. G. Sebald to dub him "a clairvoyant of the small." His revolutionary use of short prose forms won him the admiration of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, and many others. He was long believed an outsider by conviction, but Susan Bernofsky presents a more nuanced view in this immaculately researched and beautifully written biography. Setting Walser in the context of early twentieth century European history, she provides illuminating analysis of his extraordinary life and work, bearing witness to his "extreme artistic delight."

Berlin Stories

Berlin Stories PDF Author: Robert Walser
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174739
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
A New York Review Books Original In 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl, already an important stage-set designer, and immediately threw himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city. Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and satirical observations on every aspect of the bustling German capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters’ galleries, and literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram. Originally appearing in literary magazines as well as the feuilleton sections of newspapers, the early stories are characterized by a joyous urgency and the generosity of an unconventional guide. Later pieces take the form of more personal reflections on the writing process, memories, and character studies. All are full of counter-intuitive images and vignettes of startling clarity, showcasing a unique talent for whom no detail was trivial, at grips with a city diving headlong into modernity.

The Assistant

The Assistant PDF Author: Robert Walser
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811215909
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The Assistant by Robert Walser--who was admired greatly by Kafka, Musil, Walter Benjamin, and W. G. Sebald--is now presented in English for the very first time.

Oppressive Light

Oppressive Light PDF Author: Robert Walser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936873180
Category : Swiss poetry (German)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Poetry. Translated from the German by Daniele Pantano. Introduction by Carolyn Forché. OPPRESSIVE LIGHT represents the first collection of Robert Walser's poetry in English translation and an opportunity to experience Walser as he saw himself at the beginning and at the end of his literary career--as a poet. The collection also includes notes on dates of composition, draft versions the printed poems represent, which volume of the Werkausgabe the poems were first published in, and brief biographical information on characters and locations that appear in the poems and may not be known to readers.