The Chain of Things: Divinatory Magic and the Practice of Reading in German Literature and Thought, 1850-1940

by Eric Downing

Book Overview

In The Chain of Things, Eric Downing shows how the connection between divinatory magic and reading shaped the experience of reading and aesthetics among nineteenth-century realists and modernist thinkers. He explores how writers, artists, and critics such as Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin drew on the ancient practice of divination, connecting the Greek idea of sympathetic magic to the German aesthetic concept of the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1501715917
• ISBN13: 9781501715914
• Release Date: April 2018
• Publisher: Cornell University Press and Cornell Universi
• Length: 366 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher