Customer Reviews

The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche

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George S. Williamson has written a book of massive scope that fills in all of the gaps (and wounds) left open by hundreds of other, lesser books. That is because the author is a great scholar and has the patience necessary to complete such a task. I wish I had owned it when I was an undergrad trying to understand the context of German history in which myth emerged as a central concern in Romanticism. I did not have this history available in one single book and had to run all over the libraries copying endlessly from scholarly journals and buying expensive rare books in German. This book fills that need while being a delightful and instructive guide.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of German thought, but also to students of philosophy, opera, religion, and literature. Williamson studied under Frank M. Turner, a Rhodes Scholar and author of The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (Yale UP, 1981). You can expect that kind of high quality here as well, you'll definitely find it. If you enjoyed Suzanne Marchand's Down From Olympus (Princeton UP, 1996), then The Longing for Myth in Germany will compliment it perfectly. I was delighted to see such a thorough treatment of the controversy stirred over Creuzer's Symbolik, and here, as well, one will find an excellent and quotable discussion of Karl Otfried Mueller (finally). It is such a delight to read scholarly work like this, with an objective approach to topics so bantered around and carelessly treated today.