Kleist, Heinrich von
The Battle of Herrmann

A Drama. Translation and Critical Apparatus by Rachel MagShamhráin.

A first English translation of Heinrich von Kleist's "Die Herrmannsschlacht", which retells the German foundational narrative of Arminus' defeat of the Roman legions in the Teutoburger Wald, this edition is fully annotated and accompanied by a selected bibliography, contextual materials, including excerpts from Kleist’s letters and oeuvre, and commentaries on the play's two-fold and parallel historical contexts (Roman Germania and Napoleonic Germany) as well as on the play's reception. It also allows the play to come alive in our own contemporary literary and cultural context, offering timely critical insights into the rhetoric of nationalism and the ideology of partisan warfare. The play's jagged free verse and deliberately contorted syntax is rendered into an English version that follows the original as closely as possible while attending to the needs of the modern reader. This critical translation makes Kleist's subtle and revealing anatomy of nationhood, power and political strategy fully accessible to international students and scholars of cultural studies, politics and literature. XXXVIII,165 Seiten mit 8 Abb., broschiert (Königshausen & Neumann 2008) leichte Lagerspuren/minor shelfwear