This volume provides an overview of the major movements, genres, and authors of 19th-century German literature in the period from the death of Goethe in 1832 to the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. Although the primary focus is on imaginative literature and its genres, there is also substantial discussion of related topics, including music-drama, philosophy, and the social sciences. Literature is considered in its cultural and socio-political context, and the German literary scene takes its place in a wider European perspective. Following the editors' introduction, essays consider the impact of Romanticism on subsequent literary movements, the effects of major movements and writers of non-German-speaking Europe on the development of German literature, and the impact of politics on the changing cultural scene. The second section presents overviews of the principal movements of the time (Junges Deutschland, Vormdrz, Biedermeier, Poetic Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism, and Impressionism), and the third section focuses on the major genres of lyric poetry, prose fiction, drama, and music-drama. The final section provides bibliographical resources in the form of a critical bibliography and a list of primary sources. Contributors to the volume are distinguished scholars of German literature, culture, and history from North America and Europe: Andrew Webber, Lilian Furst, Arne Koch, Robert Holub, Gail Finney, Ernst Grabovszki, Benjamin Bennett, Jeffrey Sammons, Thomas Pfau, Christopher Morris, John Pizer, Thomas Spencer. Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Distinguished Professor of German at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Eric Downing is associateprofessor of German at the same institution.

Introduction - and Eric Downing
The Afterlife of Romanticism - Andrew J. Webber
Parallels and Disparities: German Literature in the Context
of European Culture - Lilian R. Furst
Revolution and Reaction: The Political Context
of Central European Literature - Arne Koch
Literary Controversy: Naming and Framing the
Post-Romantic, Pre-Realist Period - Robert C. Holub
Poetic Realisim, Naturalism, and the Rise
of the Novella: 1850-1889 - Gail Finney
Literary Currents of the 1890s: Symbolism, Impressionism,
and Turn-of-the-Century Austria - Ernst Grabovszki
The Absence of Drama in Nineteenth-Century Germany - Benjamin K. Bennett
The Nineteenth-Century German Novel - Jeffery L. Sammons
Lyric Poetry - Thomas Pfau
Richard Wagner: Opera and Music Drama - Christopher Morris
Navigating the Nineteenth Century: A Critical Bibliography - John Pizer
List of Primary Sources - Thomas Spencer