Demonic History : From Goethe to the Present / Kirk Wetters.

Urworte Goethisch : demonic primal words -- Demons of morphology -- Biographical demons (Goethe's Poetry and truth) -- The unhappy endings of morphology : Oswald Spengler's demonic history -- Demonic ambivalences : Walter Benjamin's counter-morphology -- Georg Lukacs and the demonic novel -- Demonic inheritances : Heimito von Doderer's The demons -- Conclusion. transformations of the demonic -- Appendix : German text and English translation of Goethe's "Urworte orphisch" (with commentary).

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"In this ambitious book, Kirk Wetters traces the idea of the demonic in German literature from its conceptual imbrications in Goethe to its varying legacies in the work of essential authors, both canonical and less well known, such as Friedrich Gundolf, Oswald Spengler, Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukács, and Heimito von Doderer. Wetters focuses especially on the philological and metaphorological resonances of the demonic from its core formations through its appropriations in the tumultuous twentieth century. Propelled by equal parts theoretical and historical acumen, Wetters explores the ways in which the question of the demonic has been employed to multiple theoretical, literary, and historico-political ends. He thereby produces an intellectual history that will be consequential both to scholars of German literature and to comparatists."

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