Since his writings started to appear in the standard German edition, Gesammelte Schriften, seven volumes, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, between 1972 and 1989, Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) has been established as perhaps overall the most significant philosopher, literary critic, cultural commentator, theorist of translation, and student of urban studies in the twentieth century, and for the twenty first century, though his writings had begun to appear in English translations through the 1970s.
His influence was greatest upon his younger contemporary Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), many of whose writings are a profound commentary on him and on the Frankfurt School (the Institute for Social Research). The same applies to Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and to his contemporary, Siegfried Kracauer (1889–1966). And many others, in the USA and UK and Europe, have owned a huge debt to him. He forms an essential part of this encyclopedia, and the entry here does no more than...
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References
Adorno, Theodor. 2003. The complete correspondence: Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin 1928–1940, ed. Henri Lonitz. Trans. N. Walker. Cambridge: Polity.
Benjamin, Walter. 1977. The origin of German tragic drama. Trans. J. Osborne. London: Verso.
Benjamin, Walter. 1996. Selected writings, vol. 1: 1913–1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999a. The arcades project. Trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999b. Selected writings, vol. 2: 1927–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 2002. Selected writings, vol. 3: 1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 2003. Selected writings, vol. 4: 1938–1939, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Eiland, Howard, and Michael W. Jennings. 2014. Walter Benjamin: A critical life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Smith, Gary, ed. 1995. On Walter Benjamin: Critical essays and reflections. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Steinberg, Michael P., ed. 1996. Walter Benjamin and the demands of history. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wizisla, Ermut. 2016. Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: The story of a friendship. Trans. C. Shuttleworth. London: Verso.
Wolin, Richard. 1982. Walter Benjamin: An aesthetic of redemption. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Tambling, J. (2018). Benjamin, Walter. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_51-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_51-1
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