Georg Büchner

Unflagging revolutionary, closet Christian, extreme nihilist? Different periods and critics have interpreted Georg B chner in a variety of ways. Although he died when only twenty-three, B chner's handful of works count among the greatest achievements of modern German writing, and seem to speak with ever greater power and immediacy. This is the first major new study of B chner in English for nearly twenty years, and it includes original readings of works such as Dantons Tod, Leonce und Lena, and Woyzeck. John Reddick provocatively argues that B chner was aesthetically so far ahead of his time mainly because he was seriously behind the times in his essentially idealist premises and aspirations.