From the Editor of the Book Series

We are thrilled to announce that our first edited volume of essays is scheduled to appear in July of 2020.

Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800, edited by Edgar Landgraf and Elliott Schreiber

“We are inundated with game play today. Digital devices offer opportunities to play almost anywhere and anytime. No matter what age, gender, social, cultural, or educational background—we play. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 is the first book-length work to explore how the modern discourse of play was first shaped in this pivotal period (approximately 1770-1830). The eleven chapters in this book illuminate critical developments in the philosophy, pedagogy, psychology, politics, and poetics of play as evident in the work of major authors of the period including Lessing, Goethe, Kant, Schiller, Pestalozzi, Jacobi, Tieck, Jean Paul, Schleiermacher, and Fröbel. While drawing on more recent theories of play by thinkers such as Jean Piaget, Donald Winnicott, Jost Trier, Gregory Bateson, Jacques Derrida, Thomas Henricks, and Patrick Jagoda, the volume shows the debates around play in the decades in German letters around 1800 to be far richer and more complex than previously thought, as well as more relevant for our current engagement with play. For it is here that the parameters are set that continue to guide our debates about what are good rather than bad games, or what constitutes good rather than bad practices of play.”

Also, don’t forget that GSNA members receive a 40% discount plus free shipping on our two most recent titles (or in fact any book distributed by Rutgers UP):

• Ellwood Wiggins, Odysseys of Recognition: Performing Intersubjectivity in Homer, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe and Kleist

• Seán Williams, Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy

At rutgersuniversitypress.org, look for the tiny red shopping-cart icon next to the title, and enter the code “BUPSociety” at check-out!Are you working on a monograph or an edited volume? As always, we’d love to hear from you. Direct inquiries to the series editor, Karin Schutjer, at kschutjer@ou.edu.

Karin Schutjer, University of Oklahoma

From the Editor of the Book Series

Wiggins

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Williams

We are proud to announce the recent publication of two excellent new volumes in the series New Studies in the Age of Goethe:Odysseys of Recognition:  Performing Intersubjectivity in Homer, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and KleistBy Ellwood Wiggins (University of Washington, Seattle)www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/odysseys-of-recognition/9781684480371"This is an intelligent, serious, patient, and innovative work. It is also beautifully written: nimble, unaffected, crystal-clear, and often entertaining." (Nicholas Rennie, Rutgers University)

Literary recognition is a technical term for a climactic plot device. Odysseys of Recognition claims that interpersonal recognition is constituted by performance, and brings performance theory into dialogue with poetics, politics, and philosophy. By observing Odysseus figures from Homer to Kleist, Ellwood Wiggins offers an alternative to conventional intellectual histories that situate the invention of the interior self in modernity. Through strategic readings of Aristotle, this elegantly written, innovative study recovers an understanding of interpersonal recognition that has become strange and counterintuitive. Penelope in Homer's Odyssey offers a model for agency in ethical knowledge that has a lot to teach us today. Early modern and eighteenth-century characters, meanwhile, discover themselves not deep within an impenetrable self, but in the interpersonal space between people in the world. Recognition, Wiggins contends, is the moment in which epistemology and ethics coincide: in which what we know becomes manifest in what we do.

And:Pretexts for Writing:  German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and PhilosophyBy Seán M. Williams (University of Sheffield, UK)www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/pretexts-for-writing/9781684480524“Pretexts for Writing discusses the history of the literary and philosophical self-authored preface in the German speaking world around 1800 with an intensity and analytical depth previously unachieved in scholarship.” (Till Dembeck, University of Luxembourg)Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European - and, above all, German - Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise.

As always, we’re eager to entertain your proposals, whether for a single-authored monograph or a collection of essays. Contact Karin Schutjer kschutjer@ou.edu. I hope to hear from you!

Karin Schutjer, University of Oklahoma

From the Editor of the Book Series

Our big news is that we’re awaiting the arrival of two superb new volumes, both slated to come out in February 2019.Odysseys of Recognition:  Performing Intersubjectivity in Homer, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and KleistBy Ellwood Wiggins (University of Washington, Seattle)www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/odysseys-of-recognition/9781684480371Literary recognition is a technical term for a climactic plot device. Odysseys of Recognition claims that interpersonal recognition is constituted by performance, and brings performance theory into dialogue with poetics, politics, and philosophy. By observing Odysseus figures from Homer to Kleist, Ellwood Wiggins offers an alternative to conventional intellectual histories that situate the invention of the interior self in modernity. Through strategic readings of Aristotle, this elegantly written, innovative study recovers an understanding of interpersonal recognition that has become strange and counterintuitive. Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey offers a model for agency in ethical knowledge that has a lot to teach us today. Early modern and eighteenth-century characters, meanwhile, discover themselves not deep within an impenetrable self, but in the interpersonal space between people in the world. Recognition, Wiggins contends, is the moment in which epistemology and ethics coincide: in which what we know becomes manifest in what we do.AndPretexts for Writing:  German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and PhilosophyBy Seán M. Williams (University of Sheffield, UK)www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/pretexts-for-writing/9781684480524Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of Dichter und Denker. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel (among many others) used the preface in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European–and, above all, German–Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise.As always, we’re eager to hear about your proposals, whether a single-authored monograph or a collection of essays. With Bucknell’s new publishing partnership with Rutgers, the series is now more attractive than ever.  Cover prices have come way down:  both of our forthcoming volumes are priced at $34.95 for the paperback edition.  So if you’re at the GSA please come by the cash bar to chat.  We hope to have books and flyers on display.

Karin SchutjerUniversity of Oklahoma

From the Editor of the Book Series

This fall, two titles will be appearing in the GSNA series at Bucknell University Press, New Studies in the Age of Goethe:

• Odysseys of Recognition: Performing Intersubjectivity in Homer, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Kleist by Ellwood Wiggins (University of Washington, Seattle)
• Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy by Seán Williams (University of Sheffield, UK)

Bucknell University Press has now transitioned to a new partnership with Rutgers University Press, which will bring several advantages including lower cover prices and GSNA-member discounts. So this is a wonderful time to send us your proposals for monographs or edited collections! Contact me at kschutjer@ou.edu.

Karin SchutjerUniversity of Oklahoma

From the Editor of the Book Series

The New Studies in the Age of Goethe editorial board has been busy on several fronts and expects to see a couple new volumes appear in 2018. Stay tuned!But meanwhile we’re looking forward to the publication later this fall of Vance Byrd’s fascinating study: A Pedagogy of Observation: Nineteenth-Century Panoramas, German Literature, and Reading Culture.Changes are afoot at Bucknell University Press. In January, Bucknell’s publishing contract will switch from Rowman & Littlefield to Rutgers University Press. The new partnership will bring multiple advantages, including lower cover prices and special discounts for GSNA members.Last spring the editorial board decided that we would begin accepting proposals for edited essay collections, and we have already reviewed one very promising proposal. So keep sending us your ideas for both your monographs and your essay collections!

Karin SchutjerUniversity of Oklahoma