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The Civilizing Process stands out as Norbert Elias' greatest work, tracing the "civilizing" of manners and personality in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages by demonstrating how the formation of states and the monopolization of power within them changed Western society forever. more The Civilizing Process stands out as Norbert Elias' greatest work, tracing the "civilizing" of manners and personality in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages by demonstrating how the formation of states and the monopolization of power within them changed Western society forever. less 
Jack ZipesElias is yet another person who also fled the Nazis! But, instead of going to America, he went to England. He developed his own sociological theories in England, which were not really recognised until the late 1960s when his book was translated. It had a profound influence on sociology, particularly in the UK and to a certain extent in the States. He studied the ways in which people were... (Source)
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Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."
Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of... more Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."
Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.
The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.
Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.
This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory. less Jack ZipesThe two authors are also Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1940s. They published their book in 1947, and they share a great deal with Ernst Bloch, whom they knew, although they had different perspectives in regard to philosophy and sociology. Horkheimer and Adorno began as sociologists. (Source)
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Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of such contemporary masters of supernatural fiction as Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, and Kelly Link, who introduces this edition of Carter's most celebrated book, published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth.
In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard,"... more Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of such contemporary masters of supernatural fiction as Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, and Kelly Link, who introduces this edition of Carter's most celebrated book, published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth.
In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Beauty and the Beast," giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition. less Jack ZipesYes. Angela Carter played a very important role in my life because I was born in 1937, a few years before she was born, and although we didn’t grow up together, we both grew up in a world where sexism was out in the open. There was no critique of the type of sexism that I experienced when I grew up, and I think the same is true for her. And we both experienced what a lot of people called the... (Source)
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Volume 3
Ernst Bloch, Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, Paul Knight | 4.27
Jack ZipesErnst Bloch writes in a complicated, abstract and poetic style that is very difficult to comprehend. A lot of contemporary writers think that he has his own type of language, which is true to a certain extent. He wrote many different books, and the book I admire the most is The Principle of Hope. It is a three-volume study which he began writing in Europe in the late 1930s while he was escaping... (Source)
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E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann | 4.14
The Serapion Brethren (Die Serapionsbruder) is the name of a literary and social circle, formed in Berlin in 1818 by the German romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann and several of his friends. The Serapion Brethren also is the title of a four-volume collection of Hoffmann's novellas and fairytales that appeared in 1819, 1820, and 1821.Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century. He is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.Contents of Vol II include: THE LIFE OF A WELL-KNOWN CHARACTER; ALBERTINE'S WOOERS; THE UNCANNY GUEST; MADEMOISELLE SCUDERI; GAMBLERS' FORTUNE;... more The Serapion Brethren (Die Serapionsbruder) is the name of a literary and social circle, formed in Berlin in 1818 by the German romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann and several of his friends. The Serapion Brethren also is the title of a four-volume collection of Hoffmann's novellas and fairytales that appeared in 1819, 1820, and 1821.Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century. He is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.Contents of Vol II include: THE LIFE OF A WELL-KNOWN CHARACTER; ALBERTINE'S WOOERS; THE UNCANNY GUEST; MADEMOISELLE SCUDERI; GAMBLERS' FORTUNE; SIGNOR FORMICA; PHENOMENA; THE MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE OF THINGS; THE KING'S BETROTHED. Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's fictional opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann', and the author of the novelette 'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King'. less Jack ZipesThe Serapion Brethren was a multi-volume work with a narrative frame in which friends get together at a tavern to drink and tell stories. And in that frame Hoffmann talks about an eccentric recluse by the name of Serapion, and he developed the Serapion principle, which was an eidetic concept of art. He argued that if an artist is going to be devoted to his writing, everything that you see in your... (Source)
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