Johann Gottfried Herder: Selected Early Works, 1764-1767 : Addresses, Essays, and Drafts; Fragments on Recent German Literature

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Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992 - Literary Criticism - 352 pages
The first English translation of some of the early works of Johann Gottfried Herder. Johann Gottfried Herder was one of the central figures in eighteenth-century European intellectual history. As a philosopher and historian, a literary critic and theoretician, a poet, translator, and educator, he was one of the last great universalists and one of the pioneers of the Sturm and Drang movements as well as the mentor of the young Goethe in Strassburg. His literary fame rests on his early publications, which until now have been available only in German. Although Herder addresses in these texts the state of German literature during the Enlightenment, he goes far beyond mere literary criticism by basing his ideas on anthropological considerations within the boundaries of an established national identity. The editors have chosen texts that anticipate most of Herder's ideas on aesthetics and philosophy of the later years.

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Contents

On Diligence in the Study of Several Learned
29
4
59
Course of the Ages A Fragment
65
Copyright

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About the author (1992)

Herder, humanist philosopher, poet, and critic, was born in Mohrungen in East Prussia. He suffered a deprived childhood but managed to attend the University of Konigsberg, where he soon abandoned medical studies for theology. It was then that he came under the aegis of Kant, an influence that led to Herder's revolutionary approach to history. In his major work, Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784--1791), he proclaimed "humanity to be the essence of man's character as well as the irrevocable aim of history" (Ernst Rose). By articulating the idea of different cultures as units that could be understood from without by empathy rather than by analysis, Herder became the foremost theorist of European nationalism. He called attention to folk genres such as the ballad and the fairy tale, thereby exerting an important influence on romanticism. The work of Herder provided much of the foundation for the developing disciplines of folklore and anthropology.

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