Bertolt Brecht, one of the most influential European playwrights of the twentieth century, was also a poet of distinction. This volume is the first comprehensive study devoted to his most important collection of political poetry, the Svendborg Poems. The contributors analyse Brecht's work critically and historically, discussing it in relation to questions of poetics, political commitment, exile, propaganda, rhetoric, and the scope and limitations of political poetry. Links are also drawn with the work of German, Soviet and English poets of the period, and with later Germany poets.
Brecht's reputation, which is now world-wide, rests principally on his contribution to political theatre in the twentieth century. He is known, not only for such major plays as Mother Courage and her Children, The Life of Galileo, The Good Person of Szechwan, or The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and for the concepts of 'Epic Theatre' or the 'alienation effect', but also for the exemplary productions with which the Berliner Ensemble scored successes both at its home in East Berlin and on its influential tours throughout Europe. However, Brecht also produced important work in the 1920s, before he became a committed political dramatist. This study therefore surveys his whole development, considering both the continuities and the discontinuities between his earlier and his later, Marxist, work examining critically the relations between theory and practice, and studying the major plays in detail. It argues that Brecht's procedures both of writing and production are better understood as rhetorical strategies than as 'scientific' demonstrations. '...Dr Speirs provides a balanced amount of description and of analysis, which together with details of productions (supported by eight pages of illust
Germany's unique historical experience of undergoing national unification twice in a little over a century makes it a fascinating object of study. In this volume the processes of unification are analyzed from the point of view of historians, political scientists and literary historians. Because each event had quite different historical pre-conditions (the first having been long anticipated and pursued, whereas the second took virtually all participants by surprise), the processes of adjustment to it have differed in many ways.
