Literary History and the Challenge of Philology: The Legacy of Erich Auerbach (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture)

Seth Lerer

A century after his birth and fifty years after the composition of his powerfully influential Mimesis, Erich Auerbach is still a touchstone for contemporary academic debates on the place of historical criticism in the construction of literary theory, on the relations between intellectual activity and political action, and on the function of the critic in recording - or effecting - social change. These fourteen essays draw on new biographical information and recent developments in literary theory and cultural studies to reinterpret Auerbach's work, both in the social and historical contexts of its author's life - a Jew in 1930's Germany, an academic exile in Turkey, and, later, an intellectual emigre in America - and in its current institutional context. But this is more than a volume on the writings of a single critic. Taken together, the essays challenge and critique some of the...

See on goodreads | librarything