Buchner and Collected Essays (Paperback)

The author has traced the tragically short life of Georg Buchner, the early 19th century German writer, who died at the age of 23, while at the same time critically examining the body of his literary work. He began as a student of medicine rather than literature and continued to be fascinated by neurology, as we can see through his examination of the mind of Lenz. Why Buchner? He has come to be regarded as a prophetic figure in literary circles, exercising a profound influence on such writers as Gerhart Hauptmann, Franz Wedekind, Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller and Bertolt Brecht, to name but a few. Buchner, himself greatly influenced by the 'Sturm and Drang' movement and the French Revolution, as well as the timid uprising of the peasants of his home state of Hesse, has been recognized as one of the earliest European writers to take an interest in the fate of the working-classes. It is no accident that "Woyzeck" is staged so often in so many different countries. The present work is completed by an essay on Brecht's didactic writings, incidentally also revealing the debt that Brecht owed to Buechner, as well as two unrelated essays, the role of women in Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" and a comparative study of Flaubert's short-story, "Un Coeur Simple", paving the way for many of the themes that we discover in "Madame Bovary".