DILETTANTISM AND ITS VALUES FROM WEIMAR CLASSICISM TO THE FIN DE sICLE
LEGENDA, founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities, including works on Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. An Editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British Comparative Literature Association.
The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) encourages and promotes advanced study and research in the field of the modern humanities, especially modern European languages and literature, including English, and also cinema. It also aims to break down the barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization. The Association fulfils this purpose primarily through the publication of journals, bibliographies, monographs and other aids to research.
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Editorial Board
Chairman
Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford
Professor John Batchelor, University of Newcastle (English)
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of Exeter (French)
Professor Colin Davis, Royal Holloway University of London (Modern Literature, Film and Theory)
Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul Garner, University of Leeds (Spanish)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret,
Queen Mary University of London (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John's College, Cambridge (Linguistics)
Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John's College, Oxford (German)
Professor Lesley Sharpe, University of Exeter (German)
Professor David Shepherd, University of Sheffield (Russian)
Professor Alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor David Treece, King's College London (Portuguese)
Professor Diego Zancani, Balliol College, Oxford (Italian)
Managing Editor
Dr Graham Nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford oxi 2JF, UK
legenda@mhra.org.uk
www.legenda.mhra.org.uk
STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Editorial Committee
Professor Peter France, University of Edinburgh (Chairman)
Professor Stephen Bann, University of Kent
Dr Elinor Shaffer, School of Advanced Study, London
ALSO PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES
- Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse, by S. S. Prawer
- Hlderlin and the Dynamics of Translation, by Charlie Louth
- Aeneas Takes the Metro:The Presence of Virgil in Twentieth-Century French Literature, by Fiona Cox
- Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 1780-1955, by Peter D. Smith
- Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual, by Nigel Saint
- Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski, translated by Adam Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie
- Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry, by Richard Serrano
- The Anatomy of Laughter, edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran and Jane Taylor
- Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de sicle, by Richard Hibbitt
- The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation, by Claire Whitehead
Dilettantism and its Values
From Weimar Classicism to the fin de sicle
Richard Hibbitt
First published 2006
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2006
ISBN 13: 978-1-904350-55-2 (hbk)
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Copy-Editor: Nigel Hope
This publication was grant-aided by the Publications Fund of National University of Ireland, Galway
Contents
Guide
FOR MY PARENTS
The publication of this book has benefited from generous financial support from the Publications Fund of National University of Ireland, Galway, where I held a temporary lectureship in the Department of French in 200405. I would like to thank Jane Conroy of the Department of French at NUI Galway for her assistance. I am also grateful for financial support from the British Comparative Literature Association and from the F. R. Leavis fund in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, The initial research for this book was carried out with the aid of a postgraduate award from the British Academy.
The book is a revised version of a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of East Anglia in 2001. I would like to thank my supervisor, Clive Scott and my examiners, Jo Catling and Duncan Large for their advice and encouragement. I am also indebted to those friends and colleagues who read various drafts of the thesis, namely Carl Krockel, Carl Lavery, Nola Merckel, Florian Radvan, Richard Robinson and Christopher Smith. I would also like to express my gratitude to Elinor Shaffer for her support of the project, to Anthony Vivis for his advice regarding translations from German, and to Graham Nelson at Legenda for his help in bringing the work to fruition.
It is a pleasure to thank my parents, Helen and Ken Hibbitt for their support and encouragement, and to thank Maria and Eleonora Consta for their good company.