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Electronic edition
Open Access
Year of edition: 2009
e-ISBN: 978-88-6453-004-8

«In carne e ossa»: il corpo nelle opere di Georg Büchner

Büchner, Rousseau e i materialisti francesi del Settecento

Carnevale, Roberta

Roberta Carnevale, has a PhD in German Studies (joint degree from the Universities of Florence and Bonn) and teaches German in the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Florence. Her research activity is centred on comparative studies, and in particular on the relations between German and French culture in the nineteenth century, which she has dealt with in essays on Vormärz and Georg Büchner and in publications addressing the concepts of Heimat and Heimatkunstbewegung. In the sphere of cultural and linguistic mediation, she has published a comparative analysis of the European press on the question of the entry of Turkey into the EU, and has compiled a German-Italian dictionary of academic terminology.

Serie: Biblioteca di Studi di Filologia Moderna

Scientific committee: Biblioteca di Studi di Filologia Moderna

In the critical literature on Georg Büchner this monograph represents the first organic work devoted to the subject of the body - a pivotal issue for an understanding of his writings. The book investigates the significance assumed by the human body in three spheres of analysis: the political, the erotic and the scientific-philosophical. In the latter area the analysis hinges on the relations between Büchner's work and the writings of the three principal French materialist philosophers of the eighteenth century: La Mettrie, d'Holbach and Helvétius. The appraisal of this relation illustrates not only Büchner's appropriation of the legacy of ideas of French materialism, but also moments in which he satirises, sarcastically criticises or outrightly rejects certain central aspects of this vision of man and nature. From this analysis and the study of the political significance of the body and the erotic aspect, it emerges that the body, understood as Leib - human body, lived and living, the hub of subjective perception and experience - not only has a crucial function in the figurative layout of the literary works, but is also the focal point of Büchner's view of man, thus assuming a central importance both in the three areas examined and in the more strictly aesthetic sphere.

This book won the Premio Associazione Sigismondo Malatesta "Opera Critica" - Letteratura, Teatro e Arti dello spettacolo - Edizione 2009.

«In carne e ossa»: il corpo nelle opere di Georg Büchner by Roberta Carnevale is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non commerciale-Non opere derivate 2.5 Italia License.
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