Preface
The essays assembled here were previously published but scattered in specialized scholarly journals and volumes of contributions by various authors where they could not find the wider audience that a collection like the present one may reach. They have now been arranged in a pattern of thematic coherence outlined in the introduction. Repetitions have been kept to the necessary minimum in order to avoid cluttering without sacrificing signals of communication from one text to the other.
Most of these essays address aspects of themes that have been prominent in my scholarly writing for several years. They do so in a way that is more accessible as well as more succinct and more suggestive of further exploration than the elaborate examination of the wider reaches offered in my German-language books, which are mentioned where appropriate.
The majority of the texts were either written in English or adapted from German versions and revised stylistically and otherwise for the present volume. Wherever the earlier versions did not provide English equivalents of German quotations, I have paraphrased or translated them, leaving the German text in place, or relegating it to a note, or eliminating it entirely, as readability or the significance of the original wording might warrant. Some of these texts started their life as lectures; I have weeded out most though not all traces of this genesis.
Three of the essays (nos. 1, 7, and 8) were translated by colleagues: James van der Laan, Alexa Alfer, and Ritchie Robertson, respectively. I am greatly indebted to them for allowing me to recycle their work. I have introduced a few minor revisions with a view to modifying or clarifying points made, without quibbling about the translators’ choice of words. Their style of referencing was changed slightly to conform to that of the rest of the essays. (British spelling was left untouched in the essays of Section II.) Unless stated otherwise, English versions of quotations are those of the translators. In none of the twelve texts was there any need for substantial changes in the light of recent scholarly publications.
I am grateful to the publishers listed in the “Acknowledgements” for permission to reprint these essays. The frontispiece is used by permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, the cover image by permission of Pusey Library, Harvard University.
I am much indebted to Open Book Publishers for preparing the selective index with some help from me.
I thank Harvard University for a printing subsidy from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research.