Author Archives: faas
About Ekbert Faas
Background Ekbert Faas pursued his studies in Munich, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Rome, and London. A full professor of English Literature after completing two Ph.Ds (Dr. phil. and Dr. habil.) in Germany, he left Europe to restart his career under a … Continue reading
Naturalizing Aesthetics and Art, Aguilar Press, 2021
Art theorists, both traditional and Darwinist, tend to speak in omnibus nutshell formulas such as “significant form” or “aesthetic instinct.” Faas instead offers an unprecedented theory of art and aesthetics organized around five comprehensive categories (the appetitive, sexual, perceptual, cognitive, … Continue reading
The Survival of Beauty and Art, Aguilar Press, 2013
The Survival of Beauty and Art develops a new theory of aesthetics and art. Art is embedded in what is called “the artifactual,” i.e., things (like beehives and churches) created by some of nature’s organisms, rather than by nature itself. … Continue reading
God’s Will Be Death, by Hugh Werister, Aguilar Press, 2012
Cognitive scientist John Paulus, practices magical conjurations in order to bring about the death of his wife, Claire. After Claire dies in a house fire set on by someone else, Paulus is convicted of murder and jailed, first in a … Continue reading
Mengele’s Friend?, by Simon Kogon, Aguilar Press, 2012
An adventure story set in 1969-72 North and South America, Mengele’s Friend? narrates Kurt’s search for a father known for his war heroics and literary achievements, but also for befriending human monsters like Mengele and Eichmann. At a deeper level, … Continue reading
The Genealogy of Aesthetics, Chinese edition, Beijing, 2011
This Chinese translation by Jia Yan (Simplified Chinese) of The Genealogy of Aesthetics was produced by The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2011.
Shakespeare’s Poetics (263pp) Cambridge University Press, Paperback Re-Issue 2010 of the 1986 hardcover.
“This is a thoroughly documented compendium of Shakespeare’s implied views on his own art … genuinely illuminating comparisons with Montaigne and Bacon …” (Year’s Work in English Studies, 67, 1986) “Prof. Faas has provided a scholarly and fascinating piece of … Continue reading
The Genealogy of Aesthetics (450 pp) Cambridge University Press, 2002
Predictably, this Nietzschean critique of idealist Western aesthetics has met with both praise and rebuttal. Professor Dabney Townsend, Director General of the American Society of Aesthetics, after reviewing Genealogy in the European Journal of Philosophy, April 2004, 12, 1,152-56) and calling its thesis “clearly … Continue reading
Robert Creeley: A Biography (516 pp), by Ekbert Faas with Maria Trombacco, McGill-Queen’s University Press (Canada) and University of New England Press (US), 2001
As Graham Robb put it, “readers of poètes maudits often identify with the poets themselves, [whereas] critics and biographers tend to identify with the parents.” Like Robb’s biography of Rimbaud, Faas’s Robert Creeley counts among the rare exceptions to this rule. As Eric … Continue reading
La Tête de Woyzeck (253 pp), translated by Marie-Claude Fournier-Plowiecka and Ekbert Faas, éditions Marie Plowiecka, Paris, 1995. French version of Woyzeck’s Head.
Woyzeck’s Head (270pp) Cormorant Books, 1991
When Ekbert Faas’ novel, along with Douglas Copeland’s Generation X and Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, was shortlisted for the Smith Books First Novel Award, Woyzeck’s Head was called the “most philosophically ambitious and dense of all the novels … Continue reading
Irving Layton and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence 1953-1978 (312pp), edited by Ekbert Faas and Sabrina Reed, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990
“The day has been slow in coming, but at last the scholars of post-war Canadian literature have emerged and begun production … A noteworthy example is the recently published correspondence of Irving Layton and Robert Creeley, edited by Ekbert Faas … Continue reading
Retreat into the Mind. Victorian Poetry and the Rise of Psychiatry (312pp) Princeton University Press, 1988 (Paperback Edition, 1991)
“Now Faas has turned to Victorian psychiatry and poetry, an intersection that narrows the distance between literature and medicine, demonstrating how each anticipates the other. Retreat into the Mind is a splendid book worthy of praise and congratulation, not only … Continue reading
Shakespeare’s Poetics (263pp) Cambridge University Press, 1986
“This is a compendium of Shakespeare’s implied views on his own art … comparisons with Montaigne and Bacon …” (Year’s Work in English Studies, 67, 1986) “Prof. Faas has provided a scholarly and fascinating piece of research. As he admits, … Continue reading
Tragedy and After: Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe (250pp) McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984 (Paperback Edition, 1986)
According to George Steiner’s The Death of Tragedy of 1961, tragedy was bound to die out with the waning of transcendentalism after the seventeenth century. “Tragedy and After believes that such a process is also – or rather – to … Continue reading
Young Robert Duncan: Portrait of the Poet as Homosexual in Society (361pp) Black Sparrow Press, 1984
“Ekbert Faas … has a hawk’s eye for significant projects. His early books identified the tragic dramatic monologue as a subgenre whose richness required exploration, whose full range would never be tapped until the cultural dynamics that shaped it had … Continue reading
Kenneth Rexroth. Excerpts from a Life. Edited, with a foreword by Ekbert Faas (61pp) Santa Barbara: Conjunctions, 1981
Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe, with Selected Critical Writings by Ted Hughes and Two Interviews (230pp) Black Sparrow Press, 1980
“Ekbert Faas published an interview with Ted Hughes in the London Magazine (January 1971) which has since become a fruitful point of entry for those wishing to be initiated into Hughes’s later poetry … The book which Dr Faas has … Continue reading
Towards a New American Poetics (296pp) Black Sparrow Press, 1978
“A book that should become the standard text on the subject in universities across the nation.” (Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, personal correspondence) “Undoubtedly the best contribution [to scholarly involvement with the poetry of the last three decades] comes from an, … Continue reading
Offene Formen. Zur Entstehung einer neuen Ästhetik (Open Forms: About the Emergence of a New Aesthetics) (197pp) Munich, Goldmann Verlag, 1975
(Translated from the German): “The phenomenon of ‘open form’ has played a crucial role in the emergence of a new aesthetics, and in literature and the fine arts no less than in music. At the end of his complex and … Continue reading
Poesie als Psychogramm. Die dramatisch-monologische Versdichtung im viktorianischen Zeitalter (The Dramatic Monologue in the Victorian Era) (228pp) Munich, Fink Verlag, 1974
(Translated from the German): “The study is presented lucidly and appropriately with regard to the subject. … [it] closes a big gap in English literary criticism. It is the first comprehensive and systematic exploration of a so far uncharted area. … Continue reading
Der Gedankenfuchs (The Thought Fox), translations of selected poems by Ted Hughes, by Ekbert Faas with Martin Seletsky, ed. W. Hollerer (69pp) Berlin, LCB editionen, 1971
Schein und Sein in der frühelisabethanischen Lyrik und Prosa (1550-1590), 1965
Ekbert Faas’s first PhD examines the theme of appearance and reality in early Elizabethan literature which, as his doctoral supervisor, Professor Wolfgang Clemen, had demonstrated plays a major role in Shakespeare. Faas was awarded “summa cum laude,” the highest distinction, … Continue reading
Additional Information
Ekbert Faas has also published numerous essays, small monographs, and scholarly articles on subjects such as composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hindu literary classic Shakuntala by K?lid?sa, and Goethe’s Faust in diverse journals like Comparative Literature, Boundary 2, Interface (Amsterdam), London Magazine, … Continue reading
Works near completion or ready for publication
Under Dante’s Shadow: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and the Alternative Tradition is a critical study of Catholicism’s poeta divino, largely from the perspective of minor and major fellow poets who disagreed with or parodied his works, as in Cecco d’Ascoli’s L’Acerba, Boccaccio’s … Continue reading