Science, Satire, and Wit: The Essays of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Front Cover
P. Lang, 1990 - 303 pages
This book attempts a critical assessment of the eighteenth-century German essay utilizing the journal essays of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg as a paradigm. It places a socio-historical and genre-theoretical analysis of the eighteenth-century German essay across a close reading of Lichtenberg's essays. The study demonstrates that Lichtenberg's essays operate as critical communication for purposes of instruction and satire. What is more, such critical communication alternates with a critique of enlightenment itself. Finally, the methodology of Lichtenberg's essays is shown to be instrumental in developing imaginative and freely-associative literary strategies.

Contents

Introduction
1
Chapter 2
19
Sociology of the Essay
27
27
66
Chapter 3
83
Chapter 4
133
Chapter 6
248
Chapter 7
259
Chapter 13
271
Chapter 16
282
Index
301
Copyright

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