Screen LibraryThe last days of mankind : the complete text, with a glossary and index /
One hundred years after Austrian writer and satirist Karl Kraus began his dramatic masterpiece, The Last Days of Mankind remains as powerfully relevant as the day it was first published. Kraus's play enacts the tragic trajectory of the First World War, when mankind raced toward self-destruction...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Group Author: | ; |
| Published: |
Yale University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | New Haven : |
| Publication Dates: | [2015] |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: |
English German |
| Series: |
A Margellos world republic of letters book
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| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
One hundred years after Austrian writer and satirist Karl Kraus began his dramatic masterpiece, The Last Days of Mankind remains as powerfully relevant as the day it was first published. Kraus's play enacts the tragic trajectory of the First World War, when mankind raced toward self-destruction by methods of modern warfare while extolling the glory and ignoring the horror of a necessary war. This volume is the first to present a complete English translation of Kraus's towering work, filling a major gap in the availability of Viennese literature on the era of the War to End All Wars. Bertolt Brecht hailed The Last Days as the great dramatic work of modernism. In the apocalyptic play Kraus constructs a textual collage, blending actual quotations from the Austrian Army's call to arms, people's responses, political speeches, newspaper editorials, and a range of other sources. Seasoning the drama with comic invention and satirical verse, Kraus reveals how bungled diplomacy, greedy profiteers, Big Business complicity, gullible news readers, and, above all, the sloganizing of the press brought down the Empire. In the dramatization of sensationalized news reports, inurement to atrocities and openness to war as remedy, today's readers will hear the echo of the fateful voices Kraus recorded as his homeland descended into self-destruction. |
| Carrier Form: | xxii, 645 pages : illustrations, maps, music ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780300207675 (cloth : alkaline paper) : 0300207670 (cloth : alkaline paper) |
| Index Number: | PT2621 |
| CLC: | I521.35 |
| Call Number: | I521.35/K912 |
| Contents: | Plan of Vienna City Centre, 1905 -- Introduction: Falsehood in Wartime, by Edward Timms and Fred Bridgham -- Preface / Karl Kraus -- Dramatis Personae -- Prolgue -- Act I -- Act II -- Act III -- Act IV -- Act V -- Epilogue: The Final Night -- Translators' Afterword and Acknowledgements -- Glossary and Index -- Map of European Battle Zones of the First World War. |