Anglo-German Dramatic and Poetic Encounters: Perspectives on Exchange in the Sattelzeit(Studies in Text & Print Culture)

Focusing on particular cases of Anglo-German exchange in the period known as the Sattelzeit (1750-1850), this volume of essays explores how drama and poetry played a central role in the development of British and German literary cultures. With increased numbers of people studying foreign languages, engaging in translation work, and traveling between Britain and Germany, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave rise to unprecedented opportunities for intercultural encounters and transnational dialogues. While most research on Anglo-German exchange has focused on the novel, this volume seeks to reposition drama and poetry within discourses of national identity, intercultural transfer, and World Literature. The essays in the collection cohere in affirming the significance of poetry and drama as literary forms that shaped German and British cultures in the period. The essays also consider the nuanced movement of texts and ideas across genres and cultures, the formation and reception of poetic personae, and the place of illustration in cross-cultural, textual exchange.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Illustrations and Tables Note on the Text Introduction: Traditions and Genres in Dialogue Michael Wood Chapter One: British Ghosts of the Gothic Novel: Dramatic Adaptation as a Medium of Anglo-German Cultural Transfer in the 1790s Barry Murnane Chapter Two: “From Scotland New Come Home”: Scottish Ghosts and Afterlives of Bürger’s “Lenore” Lucy Wood Chapter Three: Of German Genres and Scottish Sentiments: Henry Mackenzie, Walter Scott, and the Schauspiel Michael Wood Chapter Four: Kotzebue’s Adaptations of English Comedies: Colman, Cumberland, and Conservatism after 1815 Johannes Birgfeld Chapter Five: Surveying Shakespeare’s Impact on German Drama: Taking a Computational Approach to an Epoch Nils Reiter and Marcus Willand Chapter Six: Milton in Germany: Translation and Creative Response John Guthrie Chapter Seven: The Female Body in Text and Image: Amelia, Lavinia, and Musidora in the German Translations of Thomson’s The Seasons and Beyond Sandro Jung Chapter Eight: Studen

About the Author :
Sandro Jung is distinguished professor of English at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and past president of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Michael Wood is British Academy postdoctoral fellow in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.

Review :
In this volume, illuminating essays by both preeminent authorities and up-and-coming scholars persuasively challenge prevailing concepts of cultural exchange, its conditions, and results, applying a broad spectrum of methods from German and British literary studies, comparative and translation studies, biography, and computational text analysis. This is an important volume not just for research into 18th- and early 19th- century Anglo-German cultural relations, but equally for research on cultural transfer. By discussing the less researched areas of poetry and drama as sites of transfer and cultural stimulation, the collection brings to the fore the fluctuating directions of interest and transfers between the two contexts. In this respect the volume is a case study that provides general insights into the multifaceted and multilateral transformations, permutations, and recycling that takes place in cultural transfer and cultural exchange. This is one of the most erudite and exciting books on Anglo-German Cultural Relations I have read. The breadth and depth of the scholarship are astonishing, with the result that on almost every page gaps in our knowledge are filled, misconceptions corrected and new avenues of scholarship opened up.