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The Enlightenment was based on the use of reason, common sense, and "natural law," and was paralleled by an emphasis on feelings and the emotions in religious, especially Pietist circles. Progressive thinkers in England, France, and later in Germany began to assail the absolutism of the state and the orthodoxy of the Church; in Germany the line led from Leibniz, Thomasius, and Wolff to Lessing and Kant, and eventually to the rise of an educated upper middle class. Literary developments encompassed the emergence of a national theater, literature, and a common literary language. This became possible in part because of advances in literacy and education, especially among bourgeois women, and the reorganization of book production and the book market. This major new reference work provides a fresh look at the major literary figures, works, and cultural developments from around 1700 up to the late Enlightenment. They trace the 18th-century literary revival in German-speaking countries: from occasional and learned literature under the influence of French Neoclassicism to the establishment of a new German drama, religious epic and secular poetry, and the sentimentalist novel of self-fashioning. The volume includes the new, stimulating works of women, a chapter on music and literature, chapters on literary developments in Switzerland and in Austria, and a chapter on reactions to the Enlightenment from the 19th century to the present. The recent revaluing of cultural and social phenomena affecting literary texts informs the presentations in the individual chapters and allows for the inclusion of hitherto neglected but important texts such as essays, travelogues, philosophical texts, and letters. Contributors: Kai Hammermeister, Katherine Goodman, Helga Brandes, Rosmarie Zeller, Kevin Hilliard, Francis Lamport, Sarah Colvin, Anna Richards, Franz M. Eybl, W. Daniel Wilson, Robert Holub. Barbara Becker-Cantarino is Research Professor in German at the Ohio State University.

The idea of desacralization has become almost commonplace, attributing to the word the rejection of what is sacred. One might think that it is strictly connected to theology and its system, or suppose that it implies the relationship human beings have with anything that can express a denial of the spiritual part of life. The concept of desacralization has numerous meanings, either from a philosophical or a literary viewpoint. The scholars' investigation of Dynamics of Desacralization has made this collection of essays rich and varied, revealing new worlds the different authors have created. What they do is to narrate various types of desacralization interrogating the nature of novels, poems or works of art; certain aspects of being are revealed through various expressions, engaging the multiple levels and the meaning of desacralization providing an articulation and interpretation of it.

Reeve provides a detailed discussion of Klesel's importance in Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg and examines possible predecessors for the Federfuchser: Wurm from Friedrich von Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, the Sekretär in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die natürliche Tochter, and Leonhard in Friedrich Hebbel's Maria Magdalene. He focuses on the features they share, such as deep-seated resentment of social superiors who, by a mere accident of birth, have power over them and, above all, the cunning that they use to overcome their social disqualifications.

The University of North Carolina Press and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University are pleased to announce the launch of The Journal of the Civil War Era. William Blair, of the Pennsylvania State University, serves as founding editor. The journal takes advantage of the flowering of research on the many issues raised by the sectional crisis, war, Reconstruction, and memory of the conflict, while bringing fresh understanding to the struggles that defined the period, and by extension, the course of American history in the nineteenth century. The Journal of the Civil War Era aims to create a space where scholars across the many subfields that animate nineteenth-century history can enter into conversation with each other. Table of Contents for this issue, Volume One, Number One: Editor's Note William Blair Welcome to the New Journal Articles Edward L. Ayers and Scott Nesbit Seeing Emancipation: Scale and Freedom in the American South Melinda Lawson Imagining Slavery: Representations of the Peculiar Institution on the Northern Stage, 1776-1860 LeeAnn Whites Forty Shirts and a Wagonload of Wheat: Women, the Domestic Supply Line, and the Civil War on the Western Border Review Essay Douglas R. Egerton Rethinking Atlantic Historiography in a Post-Colonial Era: The Civil War in a Global Perspective Book Reviews Books Received Professional Notes Aaron Sheehan-Dean The Nineteenth-Century U.S. History Job Market, 2000-2009

A cutting†‘edge media history on a perennially fascinating topic, which attempts to answer the crucial question: Who is in charge, the servant or the master?†‹ Though classic servants like the butler or the governess have largely vanished, the Internet is filled with servers: web, ftp, mail, and others perform their daily drudgery, going about their business noiselessly and unnoticed. Why then are current†‘day digital drudges called servers? Markus Krajewski explores this question by going from the present back to the Baroque to study historical aspects of service through various perspectives, be it the servants’ relationship to architecture or their function in literary or scientific contexts. At the intersection of media studies, cultural history, and literature, this work recounts the gradual transition of agency from human to nonhuman actors to show how the concept of the digital server stems from the classic role of the servant.

The focus is on German drama in this multi-faceted view of developments on the European stage over three centuries. Scholars from Great Britain, Germany and the United States examine changes wrought in the art of drama by dramatists, by actors and stage designers, and by shifting patterns of thought and power-structures. The timespan extends from Moliere and Lessing, giants of the theatrical tradition, to such latter-day iconoclasts as Beckett, Handke and Achternbusch. The book is a tribute to Ronald Peacock, distinguished British Germanist and Comparatist."

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81) stands as a key figure in German intellectual history, a bridge joining Luther, Leibniz, and German idealism. Despite his well-recognized importance in the history of thought, Lessing as theologian or philosopher of religion remains an enigmatic figure. Scholars refer to the "riddle" or "mystery" of Lessing, a mystery that has proved intractable because of his reticence on the subject of the final conclusions of his intellectual project. Toshimasa Yasukata seeks to unravel this mystery. Based on intensive study of the entire corpus of Lessing's philosophical and theological writings as well as the extensive secondary literature, Yasukata's work takes us into the systematic core of Lessing's thought. From his penetrating and sophisticated analysis of Lessing's developing position on Christianity and reason, there emerges a fresh image of Lessing as a creative modern mind, who is both shaped by and gives shape to the Christian heritage. The first comprehensive study in English of Lessing's theological and philosophical thought, this book will appeal to all those interested in the history of modern theology, as well as specialists in the Enlightenment and the German romantic movement.