|
Book Info | | | enlarge picture
| Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen: The Dramaturgy of Disavowal | | Author: | David J. Levin | ISBN: | 0691049718 | Format: | Handover | Publish Date: | June, 2005 | | | | | | | | | Book Review | | | Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen: The Dramaturgy of Disavowal FROM THE PUBLISHER This book draws on narrative and film theory, psychoanalysis, and musicology to explore the relationship between aesthetics and anti-Semitism in two important and controversial landmarks in German culture. David Levin argues that Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Fritz Lang's 1920s film Die Nibelungen creatively exploit contrasts between good and bad aesthetics to address the question of what is German and what is not. Levin begins with an explanation of the book's theoretical foundations and then applies these theories to close readings of, in turn, Wagner's cycle and Lang's film. He concludes by tracing how Germans have dealt with the Nibelungen myths in the Wake of the Second World War, paying special attention to Michael Verhoeven's 1989 film The Nasty Girl.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING This book will have a major impact not just on scholarship on Wagner and Lang, or even in the areas of music and film; I am confident that it will also produce a new reflection on the relationship between close readings of individual cultural objects and broader thinking on issues such as German national identity and self-understanding. Michael W. Jennings
| |
|