Background
Weimann, Robert Karl was born on November 18, 1928 in Magdeburg, Germany. Son of Robert and Elsa (Weihe) Weimann.
( This path-breaking study attempts to view both Reformat...)
This path-breaking study attempts to view both Reformation discourse and Renaissance fiction (and, by implication, the Elizabethan theater) as constitutive of an early modern paradigm change in the authorization of discourse. The profound crisis in traditional locations of authority, affecting religious, political, and poetic courts of appeal, is traced as interactive with an unprecedented proliferation of both signifying practices and communicative technologies. Representation itself seeks to cope with these changing uses of language and power vis-à-vis deep divisions (but also new patterns of socialization) in contemporary culture and society. Authority, now that it is less given before an utterance begins, comes to constitute itself through the competence, cogency, and efficacy of representational practice itself, even as this practice privileges, and draws upon, pictorial form in diverse cultural contexts. This book continues to search for answers to questions of why and under what conditions in the early modern period the representation of authority could increasingly be challenged by the authority of signs. Initially raised in Weimann's Shakespeare und die Macht der Mimesis, these questions are developed towards a theory and history of early modern representation that involves close encounters with a wide variety of texts, from Luther, Henry Tudor, Edward Seymour, Gardiner, and Bancroft to Malory, Erasmus, Rabelais, Sidney, Nashe, and Cervantes. "Robert Weimann is one of the world's most eminent and intellectually formidable scholars of early modern culture―and he has written a work of the utmost importance to the theory and practice of cultural and literary history, and to the study of sixteenth century English and European culture in particular. The book is an intellectual tour de force, yet one utterly devoid of the flourishes of academic self-display. This work genuinely impresses without ever seeking to impress."―Louis A. Montrose, University of California, San Diego
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801851912/?tag=2022091-20
( In Structure and Society in Literary History Robert Wei...)
In Structure and Society in Literary History Robert Weimann, one of Germany's leading literary theoreticians, raises important questions about the social function of literature and sketches the outlines of a new historical criticism. Weinmann's Marxist analysis relates the history of writing and reading to the history of social and economic activities; literature and art are imaginative appropriations of the world, producers as well as products of culture. Aesthetic structures-- texts-- and social function are necessarily interrelated for Weimann as they are not for the followers of the New Criticism or the practitioners of structuralism. Firmly grounded in Anglo-American and Western European criticism, Weimann presents a cogent critique of T. S. Eliot's concept of tradition, analyzes the development of American literary history, and reconsiders the interpretation of Shakespeare's imagery. A new concluding chapter, written especially for the Johns Hopkins edition, presents a coherent and systematically developed survey of those poststructuralist positions most relevant to the placement of "Structure and Society in Literary History" within the critical context of the mid 1980s.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801831229/?tag=2022091-20
critic educator cultural historian
Weimann, Robert Karl was born on November 18, 1928 in Magdeburg, Germany. Son of Robert and Elsa (Weihe) Weimann.
Teacher diploma, Halle University, 1951. Doctor of Philosophy, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 1955. Doctor of Philosophy habilitation, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 1962.
Doctorate (honorary), Potsdam University, 1988.
Associate professor Potsdam University, 1962-1964. Full professor Humboldt University, Berlin, 1965-1968. Fellow, professor Academy of Sciences, 1968-1991.
Chair Forschungsschwerpunkt Literaturwissenschaft, Berlin and Munich, 1992-1994. Professor University California, Irvine, since 1992. Visiting professor Toronto University, 1982, Harvard, 1984, 89, University California, Berkeley, 1986.
Consultant to Shakespeare productions Deutsches Theater, 1972, Volksbühne, 1977, Berliner Ensemble, 1986. Vice president Akademie Der Künste, Berlin, 1979-1990, member, since 1990. Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association International, German Center, Berlin, since 1982.
President Deutsche Shakespeare Society, 1985-1993. Member executive committee International Shakespeare Association, 1986-1996.
( In Structure and Society in Literary History Robert Wei...)
( This path-breaking study attempts to view both Reformat...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
Member Modern Language Association (honorary), New York Academy of Sciences.
Married Maja H. Eisentraut, November 12, 1991. Children: Gundi, Meulein, Robbie, Charlotte.