Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) - Softcover

Gottlieb, Susannah Young-ah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804745110 ISBN 13: 9780804745116

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

W. H. Auden and Hannah Arendt belonged to a generation that experienced the catastrophic events of the mid-twentieth century, and they both sought to respond to the enormity of the novel phenomena they witnessed. Regions of Sorrow explores the remarkable affinity between their works. As incisive exponents and uncompromising proponents of the insuperable condition of plurality, Auden and Arendt give voice to an unexpected and inconspicuous messianism―a messianism in which contingency, frailty, and faultiness are neither rejected nor scorned but celebrated as the indispensable elements of what Auden calls "anxious hope." Beginning with an examination of Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism and Auden's Age of Anxiety, which both conclude with meditations on Nazi terror, the author turns to an unprecedented presentation of Arendt's Human Condition in terms of Jewish-German messianism, and concludes with Auden's "In Praise of Limestone," which lays out the frail and faulty space in which messianism breaks free from apocalyptic forecasts.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Regions of Sorrow is full of insights, and anyone interested in [Hannah] Arendt, [W.H.] Auden, or the intellectual and cultural texture of twentieth-century modernity will profit by reading it.”—Political Theory

About the Author:

Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0804745110
• ISBN 13: 9780804745116
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322