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 grant from the American Council of Learned Societies in New York. A biographer, novelist, and critic, he has had a lifelong interest in art theory, especially in evolving a new aesthetics based on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences finally systematized in the first publication listed below. Early results of these endeavours include, Tragedy and After: Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe (McGill-Queen’s), Shakespeare’s Poetics (Cambridge), Retreat into the Mind. Victorian Poetry and the Rise of Psychiatry (Princeton), and The Genealogy of Aesthetics (Cambridge). Since his highly acclaimed Woyzeck’s Head, he has also continued his work as a novelist, most recently with Terrorists, featuring early Communist agitators/theoreticians Marx, Bakunin, and Nechaev, Colón · Aguilar · Cortés highlighting Cortez’ interpreter Gerónimo, di Aguilar and In Search of Dante: Gemma and Boccaccio. Faas’ major scholarly endeavour over recent years, Under Dante’s Shadow: Boccaccio, Chaucer, and the Alternative Tradition will be published in 2022.
Favourite Reading
Homer, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hobbes, Büchner, Rimbaud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Strindberg, Kalidasa, Bhagavad-Gita, Jean de Meun, Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer.
Below follows a list of his major publications, with critical summaries and appraisals