Reading Walter Benjamin

<p>'Reading Walter Benjamin' explores the persistence of absolute in Benjamin's work by sketching-out the relationship between philosphy and theology apparent in his diverse writings from the early youth-movement essays to the later books essays and fragments.<br><br>The book examines Benjamin from two main perspectives: a history-of-ideas approach situating Benjamin in relation to the new German-Jewish thinking at the turn of the twentieth-century as well as the German youth movements Surrealism and the 'Georgekreis'; and a conceptual approach examining more critical issues in relation to Benjamin and Kant modern aesthetics and narrative order.<br><br>Chapters cover: 'Kulturpessimismus' and the new thinking; metaphysics of youth: Wyneken and 'Rausch'; history: surreal Messianism; Goethe and the 'Georgekreis'; Kant's experience; casting the work of art; disrupting textual order; and exile and the time of crisis. The book uses new translations of Benjamin's essays fragments and his 'Arcades Project' and makes substantial reference to previously untranslated material.<br><br>Lane's text allows the non-specialist entry into complex areas of critical theory simultaneously offering original readings of Benjamin and twentieth-century arts and literature.</p>