Georg Brandes’ Main Currents
A Companion
edited by Jens Bjerring-Hansen and Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard
Brandes ambition was to deploy the tools of his discipline in the service of big causes, such as the promotion of freedom, peace, and modernity. His grand narrative of the evolution of European literature was delivered in person to a large audience at the University of Copenhagen, and soon after published in six volumes between 1872 and 1890. In Danish circles, he constantly challenged national narrow-mindedness and worked to establish dialogues between nations and cultures. In a wider context, he helped to put not only Denmark but the entire Scandinavian region on the global literary map. All of this was made possible by the publication of Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. This anthology compiles essays on the biographical background, overall structure, and individual volumes of Brandes magnum opus. It will serve as a resource for newcomers as well as experienced readers looking for an overview of and new paths in Brandes’ epoch-making work.
Introduction Jens Bjerring-Hansen and Lasse Horne KjAeldgaard Brandes before Main Currents: The Making of a Critic Torben Jelsbak The Textual History of Main Currents Per Dahl Brandes after Main Currents: Political Journalism, Oppressed Peoples William Banks Emigrant Literature (1872) Torben Jelsbak The Romantic School in Germany (1873) Anna Sandberg The Reaction in France (1874) Anders Engberg-Pedersen Naturalism in England (1875) Robert William Rix The Romantic School in France (1882) Carsten Meiner Young Germany (1890) Adam Paulsen Bibliography Contributors
Jens Bjerring-Hansen is Associate Professor of Scandinavian literature at the University of Copenhagen, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. Recent publications include the volumes Scandinavian Exceptionalisms. Culture, Society, Discourse Nordinstitut der Humboldt Universitat, 2021, co-edited with Torben Jelsbak and Anna Estera Mrozewicz) and Georg Brandes. Pioneer of Comparative Literature and Global Public Intellectual (Brill, 2023, co-edited with Lasse Horne KjAeldgaard and Anders Engberg-Pedersen). Lasse Horne KjAeldgaard is CEO of the Carlsberg Foundation and Professor of Danish Literature at the University of Southern Denmark. He has authored and edited several monographs and anthologies on Danish literary and cultural history, most recently The Original Age of Anxiety. Essays on Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries (Brill, 2021) and Georg Brandes. Pioneer of Comparative Literature and Global Public Intellectual (Brill, 2023, co-edited with Jens Bjerring-Hansen and Anders Engberg-Pedersen).
- Edited by Jens Bjerring-Hansen
- Edited by Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard
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