Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination

Fülszöveg

"Certainly the most important work on Wagner that I have read in the last decade. It opens up fresh approaches and is likely - no, certain - to have a major impact on Wagner studies as well as the history of antisemitic mentality." - Paul Lawrence Rose, author of Wagner: Race, Revolution I and Redemption "For the first time a study ofWagner's anti-Semitism roots itself in the . .. musical tradition in which Wagner stood and which he helped create." - Sander L. Gilman, author of Inscribing the Other This book addresses one of the most hotly contested debates in contemporary cultural life: the question of how anti-Semitism figures in the operas of Richárd Wagner. Until now, scholars have generally acknowledged Wagner's anti-Semitism but have argued that it is irrelevant to the operas themselves. MarcA.Weiner challenges that traditional view by asserting that anti-Semitism is a crucial, pervasive feature in Wagner's operas. Weiner argues that the operas exemplify and contribute to a... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"Certainly the most important work on Wagner that I have read in the last decade. It opens up fresh approaches and is likely - no, certain - to have a major impact on Wagner studies as well as the history of antisemitic mentality." - Paul Lawrence Rose, author of Wagner: Race, Revolution I and Redemption "For the first time a study ofWagner's anti-Semitism roots itself in the . .. musical tradition in which Wagner stood and which he helped create." - Sander L. Gilman, author of Inscribing the Other This book addresses one of the most hotly contested debates in contemporary cultural life: the question of how anti-Semitism figures in the operas of Richárd Wagner. Until now, scholars have generally acknowledged Wagner's anti-Semitism but have argued that it is irrelevant to the operas themselves. MarcA.Weiner challenges that traditional view by asserting that anti-Semitism is a crucial, pervasive feature in Wagner's operas. Weiner argues that the operas exemplify and contribute to a vast collection of images that are patently anti-Semitic - and that were readily recognized as such by nineteenthcentury Germán audiences.These images were associated particularly with the body. Through a careful examination ofWagner's music, libretti, and stage directions, Weiner reconstructs iconographies of corporeal images - iconographies of the eye, voice, smell, gait, and sexuality - that were essential to the operas and were "associated with anti-Semitism and the longing for an imagined Germán community." Weiner's detailed reconstruction of these iconographies adds immeasurably to our understanding of the cultural representations of anti-Semitism in European culture. A work that ranges masterfully over nineteenth-century music, culture, and society, Richárd Wagner and the AntiSemitic Imagination will significantly advance our current reassessment ofWagner and the society in which he was an influential figure. Vissza