Reflections on Literature and Culture

As one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt is well known for her writings on political philosophy. Less familiar are her significant contributions to cultural and literary criticism. This edition brings together for the first time Arendt's reflections on literature and culture. The essays include previously unpublished and untranslated material drawn from half a century of engagement with the works of European and American authors, poets, journalists, and literary critics, including such diverse figures as Proust, Melville, Auden, and Brecht.

Intended for a wide readership, this volume has the potential to change our view of Arendt by introducing her not only as one of the leading political theorists of her generation, but also as a serious, committed, and highly original literary and cultural critic. Gottlieb's introduction ties the work together, showing how Arendt developed a form of literary and cultural analysis that is entirely her own.

Author: Hannah Arendt
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 02/02/2007
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 8.94h x 6.10w x 0.85d
ISBN: 9780804744997

Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 03/15/2007 pg. 8
Library Journal 03/01/2007 pg. 83
Reference and Research Bk News 05/01/2007 pg. 266
Publishers Weekly 01/01/2007

About the Author
Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University, where she is currently the Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English. She is the author of Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W.H. Auden (Stanford, 2003).