Changing cultural tastes : writers and the popular in modern Germany / by Anthony Waine
- Author
- Waine, Anthony Edward, 1946-
- Published
- New York : Berghahn Books, 2007.
- Physical Description
- xix, 184 pages ; 25 cm
- Contents
- Ch. 1. Between 'Volk', 'Kitsch' and 'Pop': A Question of Vocabulary -- The Fatal Ambivalence of 'Volk' -- Defining Tastes -- Looking Down on the Street -- Expressing 'Free Time' -- Filling Cultural and Linguistic Vacuums -- Ch. 2. Changing Values: The Intelligentsia, 'Kultur' and The People -- Church Roots -- Till Eulenspiegel - An Early Modern Bestseller -- New Channels of Public Information -- The Origins of a New Science -- A Science of the Nation -- Decontaminating the Science of a People -- Ch. 3. The Weimar Republic and the Revolt against Good Taste and the Great Tradition -- Turning against Tradition -- The Opera of the Street - Die Dreigroschenoper -- Optical Words - Piscator's Global Theatre -- The Fatal Attractions of Low Culture - Der Blaue Engel -- Popular Culture as a Panacea - Der Steppenwolf -- Ch. 4. Democratic Compassion for 'Der kleine Mann' -- A Culture about Ordinary People -- The Challenge to the German Novelist between 1919 and 1979 -- Petit Bourgeois Powerlessness and its Consequences -- Gender and Strength -- Power to the Popular -- Structures of Feeling -- Ch. 5. The Erotic and the Pornographic between High and Low -- The Coming of Pop -- Post-War Roads to Freedom -- The Transatlantic Battle against Taboos -- Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's New Credo -- A Marxist Meditation on the Mass Media - Elfriede Jelinek's Die Liebbaberinnen -- An Ethnology of Subterranean Gay Hamburg - Hubert Fichte's Die Palette -- Ch. 6. The Metropolitan Muse -- The Anglo-German Connection -- The Rolling Stones, and London's West End -- Betwixt Pop and Beat -- Piccadilly Circus - The Symbolic Site of Big City Life -- Ch. 7. 'Wicked, Addicted, Free': The Lure and Lore of the USA -- The Cool War -- Old World versus New World -- The Beat Generation and its Early Reception -- The American-German Identity -- The Americanised Imagination -- Ch. 8. Moods and Morals in the Age of Popular Culture -- Beckett and After -- Post-Brechtian Theatre -- Bauer's Cultural Analysis -- Anatomical Cycles and Bad Tastes -- Conclusion: New Ethical Perspectives -- Ch. 9. Conclusion: The Democratisation and Pluralisation of Taste -- Germany's Political and Cultural Shifts -- The Dialectic between Difficult and Simple Art -- Popular Culture and Alltagskultur: A Difference of Language?
- Summary
- "Changing Cultural Tastes offers a critical survey of the taste wars fought over the past two centuries between the intellectual establishment and the common people in Germany. It charts the uneasy relationship of high and popular culture in Germany in the modern era. The impact of National Socialism and the strong influence from Great Britain and the United States are assessed in this cultural history of a changing nation and society. The period from 1920 to 1980 is given special prominence, and the work of significant writers and artists such as Josef von Sternberg and Bertolt Brecht, Elfriede Jelinek and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Erwin Piscator and Heinrich Boll, is closely analysed. Their work has reflected changing tastes and, crucially, helped to make taste more pluralistic and democratic."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subject(s)
- ISBN
- 9781571815224 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1571815228 (hbk. : alk. paper)
9781845455224
1845455223 - Bibliography Note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-178) and index.
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