Benjamin K. Bennett
Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature
Degrees
Columbia University, Ph.D. 1975 extra muros
Oxford University (Oriel College), B.A. 1962, M.A. 1967
Columbia College, A.B. 1960 summa cum laude
Interests
Goethe; German literature, late 18th-early 19th century, late 19th-20th century; European literature of the same periods; history and theory of the theater and of drama; theory of genres; feminist theory; Freud and psychoanalysis; literature and politics; literature and philosophy; theory of poetry.
Recent Courses
Graduate:
- 20th Century Major Authors
- Utopias and Millennialisms
- The Dramatic Theater, Theory and Practice
- Intellectual History from Nietzsche on
Undergraduate:
- Insanity
- The Problematics of Revolution
- Nietzsche
- Apocalypse Now (World Destruction in Literature)
- Freud and Literature
- Lyric Poetry
Books
The Dark Side of Literacy: Literature and Learning Not to Read (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
All Theater Is Revolutionary Theater (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 2005).
Goethe as Woman: The Undoing of Literature (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001).
Beyond Theory: Eighteenth-Century German Literature and the Poetics of Irony (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
Theater As Problem: Modern Drama and Its Place in Literature (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1990). Hardbound and paperback.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The Theaters of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1988). Paperback edition 2009.
Goethe’s Theory of Poetry: Faust and the Regeneration of Language (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1986).
Co-editor of: Probleme der Moderne: Studien zur deutschen Literatur von Nietzsche bis Brecht. Festschrift für Walter Sokel (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1983).
Modern Drama and German Classicism: Renaissance from Lessing to Brecht (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1979). Awarded the Modern Language Association James Russell Lowell Prize, 1980, for best book by a member of the Association. Paperback edition, fall 1986.
Book Manuscripts in Progress
Secular Millennialism: The Trail of Aesthetics from Baumgarten and Kant to Walt Disney and Hitler
Poetry: The Defective Art and the Art of Defect
Articles
“Goethe’s Werther: Double Perspective and the Game of Life,” to appear in Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism.
“The Future Lies Ahead” (on Warhol and Danto), forthcoming in artUS.
“Über allen Gipfeln: The Poem as Hieroglyph,” forthcoming in a Festscrift.
“Heroes and Fleabags, and Women: Gender and Representation in Penthesilea,” forthcoming in a collection of essays on Kleist.
“The Thinking Machine,” Revue internationale de philosophie, 65, no. 255 (=1/2011), 7-26.
Histrionic Nationality: Implications of the Verse in Faust,” in Goethe Yearbook, 17 (2010), pp. 21-30.
“Freud and the Denationalization of Literature,” artUS, 2010/1, 50-57.
“Secret Theses III: At World’s End,” artUS, 24/25 (Winter 2008), 60-63.
“Intransitive Autobiography: Naked Lunch and the Problem of Personal Identity,” artUS, 24/25 (Winter 2008), 31-38.
“The Politics of the Mörike-Debate and Its Object,” in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, vol. 201, Gale Literary Criticism Series, Kathy D. Darrow, project editor (Detroit, 2008), pp. 356-365.
“Secret Theses II: The Novel as Armageddon,” artUS, 23 (Summer 2008), 50-53.
“Secret Theses on Literature and Politics,” artUS, 22 (Spring 2008), 34-36.
“The Irrelevance of Aesthetics and the De-Theorizing of the Self in ‘Classical’ Weimar,” in Simon Richter (ed.), The Literature of Weimar Classicism (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2005), pp. 295-321.
“The Absence of Drama in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing (eds.), German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005), pp. 157-81.
“Attack of the Kleins,” artUS, 8 (May/June 2005), 50-51.
“It’s a Word! It’s a Claim! . . . Modernism and Related Instances of an Inherently Discredited Conceptual Type,” artUS, special issue 5/6 (Jan./Feb. 2005), 10-15.
“Speech, Writing and Identity in the West-östlicher Divan,” in Goethe Yearbook, 12 (2004), pp. 161-83.
“Hofmannsthal’s Theater of Adaptation,” in Thomas A. Kovach (ed.), A Companion to the Works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Rochester, N.Y., 2002), pp. 97-115.
“Foreword,” to each of the three volumes of Laurence A. Rickels, Nazi Psychoanalysis (Minneapolis, 2002).
“Interrupted Tragedy as a Structural Principle in Faust,” in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust, A Tragedy: Interpretive Notes, Contexts, Modern Criticism, ed. Cyrus Hamlin (New York and London, 2001), pp. 598-611.
“Strindberg and Ibsen: Toward a Cubism of Time in Drama,” in Modernism in European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Beckett, ed. Frederick J. Marker, Christopher Innes (Toronto, 1998), pp. 69-91.
“Bridge: Against Nothing” (on Nietzsche, Derrida, Irigaray), in Nietzsche and the Feminine, ed. Peter J. Burgard (U. Press of Virginia: Charlottesville, 1994), pp. 289-315.
“The Politics of the Mörike Debate and Its Object,” Germanic Review, 68 (1993), 60-68.
“Performance and the Exposure of Hermeneutics,” Theatre Journal, 44 (1992), pp. 431-447.
“Brecht’s Writing against Writing,” The Brecht Yearbook 17 (1992), pp. 164-179.
“Intransitive Parody and the Trap of Reading in Turn-of-the-Century German Prose,” in Fictions of Culture: Essays in Honor of Walter H. Sokel, ed. Steven Taubeneck (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), pp. 135-167.
“Structure, Parody and Myth in Tonio Kröger,” reprint of no. 20, in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Mann, Modern Critical Views (New York: Chelsea House, 1986), pp. 227-240.
“Werther and Montaigne: The Romantic Renaissance,” Goethe Yearbook, 3 (1986), 1-20.
“Prometheus and Saturn: The Three Versions of Götz von Berlichingen,” German Quarterly, 58 (1985), 335-47.
“Cinema, Theater and Opera: Modern Drama as Ceremony,” Modern Drama, 28 (1985), 1-21.
“Utopia to the Second Power: Literary Interpretation as Social Thought,” without the title, as a review article on Hermand, Orte. Irgendwo, in German Quarterly, 56 (1983), 106-112.
“The Generic Constant in Lessing’s Development of a Comedy of Institutions and Alienation,” German Quarterly, 56 (1983), 231-242.
“Strindberg and Ibsen: Toward a Cubism of Time in Drama,” Modern Drama, 26 (1983), 262-281.
“Levels and Movements of Consciousness in Goethe’s Faust,” Theatre Journal, 34, no. l (March, 1982), 5-19.
“Trinitarische Humanität: Dichtung und Geschichte bei Schiller,” in Friedrich Schiller: Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Aufklärung: Ein Symposium, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), pp. 164-180.
“Stefan Georges ‘Ursprünge’: Zur Deutung des ‘Siebenten Rings,’“ CASTRVM PEREGRINI, 31 (1982), no. 155, pp. 28-51.
“The Classical, the Romantic and the Tragic in Part Two of Goethe’s Faust,” Studies in Romanticism, 19 (1980), 529-550.
“‘Ursprünge’: The Secret Language of George’s Der siebente Ring,” Germanic Review, 55 (1980), 74-81.
“Goethe’s Werther: Double Perspective and the Game of Life,” German Quarterly, 53 (1980), 64-81.
“Nietzsche’s Idea of Myth: The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics,” PMLA, 94 (1979), 420-433.
“The Idea of the Audience in Lessing’s Inexplicit Tragic Dramaturgy,” Lessing Yearbook, XI (1979), 59-68.
“The Two ‘Study’ Scenes and the Pentagram in Goethe’s Faust,” Essays in Literature, 5 (1978), 223-237.
“Reason, Error and the Shape of History: Lessing’s Nathan and Lessing’s God,” Lessing Yearbook, IX (1977), 60-80.
“Goethe’s Egmont as a Politician,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 10 (1977), 351-366.
“Interrupted Tragedy as the Structure of Goethe’s Faust,” Mosaic, XI/1 (Fall, 1977), 37-51.
“Death and the Fools,” German Life & Letters, 30 (1976-77), 65-72.
“‘Vorspiel auf dem Theater’: The Ironic Basis of Goethe’s Faust,” German Quarterly, 49 (1976), 438-455.
“Casting Out Nines: Structure, Parody and Myth in Tonio Kröger,” Revue des Langues Vivantes, 42 (1976), 126-146.
“Missed Meetings in Hofmannsthal’s Der Schwierige,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 12 (1976), 59-64.
“Hofmannsthal’s Return,” Germanic Review, 51 (1976), 28-40.
“Werther and Chandos,” Modern Language Notes, 91 (1976), 552-558.
“Kleist’s Puppets in Early Hofmannsthal,” Modern Language Quarterly, 37 (1976), 151-167.
“Hans Karl’s Unmysterious Return,” Essays in Literature, 2 (1975), 230-244.
“Idea, Reality and Play-Acting in Der Tor und der Tod,” Orbis Litterarum, 30 (1975), 262-276.
with Frank G. Ryder, “The Irony of Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea: Its Form and Function,” PMLA, 90 (1975), 433-446.
“The Role of Vorwitz in Hofmannsthal’s Das Salzburger Groβe Welttheater,” Symposium, 29 (1975), 13-29.
“Chandos and his Neighbors,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, 49 (1975), 315-331.
“The Smallest World Theater,” Mosaic, VII/2 (Winter, 1975), 53-66.
“‘Tis Sixty Years Since,” review article on Strich, Die Mythologie in der deutschen Literatur, in German Quarterly, 45 (1972), 684-702.
“Language in College,” Bulletin of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages, 3, no. 4 (May, 1972), 18-20.10. “The Future of the Infinitive,” The Serif, 8, no. 3 (Sept. 1971), 14-19.
Book Reviews
on W.B. Worthen, Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama, Modern Drama, 50 (2007), 651-53.
on David E. Wellbery et al, eds., A New History of German Literature, Modern Language Quarterly 68 (2007), 578-82.
on Clark S. Muenzer, Figures of Identity, Goethe Yearbook, 3 (1986), 232-36.
on Ronald Speirs, Brecht’s Early Plays, in Modern Drama, 27 (1984), 273-274.
on Gabriele Girschner, Goethes Tasso, in Goethe Yearbook, II (1984), pp. 241-2.
on Göres, Goethes Leben, in GQ, 56 (1983), 501.
on John Geary, Goethe’s Faust, in GR, 58 (1983), 121.
on Anthony J. Niesz, Dramaturgy in German Drama, in GQ, 55 (1982), 581-582.
on Hans-Jürgen Schings, Der mitleidigste Mensch . . ., in JEGP, 81 (1982), 537-538.
on Grimm/Hermand (eds.), Karl Marx und Friedrich Nietzsche, in Monatshefte, 72 (1980), 349-352.
on Richard Unger, Hölderlin’s Major Poetry, in GQ, 51 (1978), 218-219.
on Daviau/Buelow, The “Ariadne auf Naxos” of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss, in GQ, 50 (1977), 183-184.
on two Hölderlin items, in GQ, 47 (1974), 128-129.
on Sigurd Burckhardt, The Drama of Language, in GQ, 46, Memb. Dir. (Sept. 1973), 135-138.
on F. W. Wodtke (ed.), Gottfried Benn: Selected Poems, in GQ, 44 (1971), 614-617.
on Walter Silz, Hölderlin’s Hyperion, in GQ, 44 (1971), 383-387.
on Leroy R. Shaw, The Playwright & Historical Change, in GQ, 44 (1971), 75-79.
Awards, Grants and Honors
Keynote speaker at Indiana University Graduate Student Conference, Feb. 2011
Maxwell Lecturer, Rutgers University, April 2002
Keynote speaker at the annual Dies Universitatis of the Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena, June 2001
Modern Language Association James Russell Lowell Prize, 1980, for Modern Drama and German Classicism
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1979-80
ACLS Fellowship, 1976-77