Book Description:
Nietzschean Parody
appeared first in the mid-1970s as the author was beginning to grapple with the
idea of how thinkers and writers represented their world. The book has had a
rather interesting if subliminal life. Its general thesis about Nietzsche as a
parodic writer and thinker has been generally accepted. Linda Hutcheon in her A
Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms
(New York: Methuen, 1985) uses the book and its thesis as a means of showing the
origins of the modern concept of parody. A Japanese translation of the book
appeared in Tokyo with the academic publisher Seido Sha in 1997.
For those familiar with the first edition of the book the relationship between model and parody is still viewed from Nietzsche’s own theoretical utterances and their relationship to the historical context of his time as well as from a number of parodic contexts, while each of the practical illustrations presents the general pattern of the interrelationship between Nietzsche and one of his models. Each section centers on one of the poems in Nietzsche’s “Lieder des Prinzen Vogelfrei” [“Songs of Prince Free-as-a-bird”] (1887), the central parodic document in his lyric production.
For this second revised edition, Professor Gilman has added a new chapter on the function of a parodic rereading of Nietzsche’s biography, and has added salient titles to the list of new books and essays on this topic. He has also made some minor stylistic changes to the earlier chapters, but has neither altered their argument, nor tried in general to up-date them. This book continues to add substantially to an innovative re-reading of Nietzsche that has implications for all of his work – from the juvenilia to Zarathustra and beyond.
Contents:
Introduction
Section One: Theory
I. The Aesthetics of Parody
Introduction
-- Existing models for comedy -- Theories of parody in the nineteenth century
prior to Nietzsche
II. Nietzschean Parody
The
juvenilia -- A working definition of parody -- A positive definitiion of parody
-- The role of laughter -- The parody of history -- The psychology of parody --
The implications of Nietzschean parody
Section Two: Practice
III. Nietzsche and Goethe
The
juvenilia -- Reception as repetition -- Faust and the repetition of history --
The Chorus mystics
IV. Nietzsche and Heine
Introduction
-- the parody of dialectic -- the death of God -- Reception, style and content
V. Nietzsche and Poe
Poe-mania
-- "The Principles of Composition" -- Nietzsche's "Raven" --
The final parody
VI. Nietzsche and the Pastoral Metaphor
The
bucolic in the nineteenth century and the young Nietzsche -- Theocritus and the
negative idyl -- Leopardi and the idea of history -- The eternal recurrence of
the idyl -- The nature of the bucolic
Vii. Two Deaths in 1900
Parody
as biography -- The first death -- The second death -- Lying
Notes
Supplementary Bibliography
Index of Proper Names