'Nietzsche's Goethe: In Sickness and in Health', Publications of the English Goethe Society, 77 (2008), 113–124.

Peer-reviewed journal. Originally presented as an invited paper to the English Goethe Society, April 2007.

The essay re-evaluates Nietzsche's view of Goethe by analysing the function and significance of the term 'Goethe' in Nietzsche's writings.

While Nietzsche's attitude to Goethe is indisputably complex, it is argued here that the image of Goethe presented in Nietzsche's writings is the exception which proves the rule that his engagements with historical figures are characterized by deliberate ambivalence or by violent shifts in attitude. While Nietzsche's view of Goethe is not wholly uncritical, the double-edgedness which marks Nietzsche's intellectual (and emotional) encounters with other outstanding figures in Western culture is largely absent from his engagement with Goethe.

Throughout Nietzsche's writings, Goethe is associated in invariably positive ways with diagnoses of cultural health and sickness, notably with Nietzsche's assessments of Greek antiquity, 'Erziehung', Classicism and Romanticism, Christianity, Wagner, decadence, the 'German question', Napoleon, 'Lebensbejahung', and the symbolic figure of Dionysos. Increasingly and obsessively, however, Goethe comes to be linked in Nietzsche's mind with exemplary physical and mental health, to the extent that he presents Goethe as both a promise of the posited 'Übermensch' and as an idealized self-projection or self-affirmation.

REVIEW -- Carol Diethe, Historical Dictionary of Nietzscheanism, 2nd edn, The Scarecrow Press, 2007, in Modern Language Review, 104 (2009), 248–49.

'"Aufklärung und kein Ende": The Place of Enlightenment in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought', German Life and Letters, 61 (2008), 79-97.

Peer-reviewed journal

The article traces the development of Friedrich Nietzsche’s attitude to Enlightenment and challenges the view that he can be dismissed, or revered, as an anti-Enlightenment irrationalist.

While Nietzsche rejects certain elements of Enlightenment thought, particularly those which found expression in the tenets of the French Revolution, his philosophical diagnoses are informed to an extent by the critical principles of Enlightenment. Nietzsche admires the critical spirit of certain figures associated with eighteenth-century Enlightenment, notably Voltaire and Lessing, as well as representatives of earlier ‘Enlightenments’, such as Epicurus, Petrarch and Erasmus. He is also impressed by the audacity of the Enlightenment project, however flawed parts of it may be, and by the scale of its philosophical legacy.

However, Nietzsche’s approach to Enlightenment remains ambivalent and selective. His sceptical diagnoses of the phenomenon anticipate Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique in Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947). The article concludes that it is, paradoxically, Nietzsche’s attempts to suggest ways forward for humanity that present the most significant obstacles to viewing him as an enlightened thinker.

'Thomas Mann's Mario und der Zauberer: "Simply a Story of Human Affairs"', in The Text and Its Context: Studies in Modern German Literature and Society Presented to Ronald Speirs on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. Nigel Harris and Joanne Sayner (Oxford and Berne: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 165-176.

Taking its cue from Mann’s assessment of the novella in 1949, some twenty years after its publication, and from an essay by R. C. Speirs, the article examines the tensions between political, psychological and ethical interpretations of Mario und der Zauberer.

Political interpretations of the text often see in the magician Cipolla merely a thinly veiled Mussolini-figure; psychological readings tend to focus on the text’s portrayal of the mind games and performance wizardry employed by (fascist) demagogues; while ethical interpretations often present the text as a warning or even as a call to arms.

Mann’s own view of Mario und der Zauberer was inconsistent and contradictory. Over time he became increasingly embarrassed, it seems, by the way in which the text revealed not only the hypnotic attraction of political extremism but also the shortcomings of bourgeois resistance to the rise of fascism. While he remained convinced of its merits as a work of art, Mann came to believe that the novella had failed in its political objectives.

The article will argue that Mann’s assessment is largely correct. Paradoxically, the artistic qualities of Mario und der Zauberer (its allegorical construction, the brilliant psychological portrayal of Cipolla, and the ambivalence of its catastrophic conclusion) tend to undermine its intended political and ethical messages.

'Playing with the Rules: Schiller's Experiments in Short Prose Fiction: 1782-1789', in Schiller's Literary Prose Works: New Translations and Critical Essays, ed. Jeffrey L. High (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008), pp. 188–201.

Draft only. Final version published in Schiller's Literary Prose Works: New Translations and Critical Essays, ed. Jeffrey L. High (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008), pp. 188–201.

The essay describes and analyses three of Schiller's earliest prose sketches, including his very first publication, Eine grossmütige Handlung, aus der neusten Geschichte (A Magnanimous Act from most recent History) of 1782, and two pieces which appeared in the Teutscher Merkur towards the end of the decade: Herzog von Alba bei einem Frühstück auf dem Schlosse zu Rudolstadt. Im Jahr 1547 (Duke Alba at Breakfast at Castle Rudolstadt) of 1788, and Spiel des Schicksals. Ein Bruchstück aus einer wahren Geschichte (Play of Fate. A Fragment of a True Story), published in 1789.

Traditional critical approaches to these short texts (e.g. Bürger 1987, Alt 2000) have tended to focus on their "psychological realism" as well as their indebtedness to the philosophical and prose writing conventions of the "Aufklärung". This essay argues that there is a close connection between these short short stories and the scepticism towards "Aufklärung" ideals expressed in Die Räuber and Don Karlos, which in turn anticipates the more fully developed anthropological and historical pessimism of Schiller’s later writings.

REVIEW -- Paul Bishop and R. H. Stephenson, Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism, Camden House, 2005, in Modern Language Review, 102 (2007), 893–94.

REVIEW -- Herbert Lehnert and Eva Wessell (eds.), A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann, Camden House, 2004, in Modern Language Review, 102 (2007), 573–74.

'Images of Schiller in National Socialist Germany', in Schiller: National Poet – Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium, ed. Nicholas Martin. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 61 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 275–99.

Chapter in edited volume

The essay analyses attitudes to Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 in order to establish to what extent his character and work, however interpreted, provided a rallying-point for endorsers of the National Socialist regime as well as for some of its opponents. The nature of these attitudes is investigated, together with the related question of Schiller’s political and ideological malleability.

Analysis of engagements with Schiller in this period reveals that there was no single, monolithic National Socialist “Schillerbild”. While Nazi treatments of Schiller were manipulative in the extreme and drew heavily on existing myths surrounding the poet, they were anything but consistent or uniform.

'Introduction: Schiller After Two Centuries', in Schiller: National Poet – Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium, ed. Nicholas Martin, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 61 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 7-21.

Introduction to edited volume

'Ewig verbundene Geister': Thomas Mann's Re-engagement with Nietzsche, 1943-1947, Oxford German Studies, 34 (2005), 197–203.

Peer-reviewed journal. Final Ms. For published version, go to http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/ogs/2005/00000034/00000002/art00006

During the mid-1940s Thomas Mann made determined and sustained efforts to explicate and account for Germany's catastrophic wager with the dark forces of National Socialism. In Mann's fictional writing of the period 1943-1947 and in his more discursive texts, Friedrich Nietzsche emerges as a key figure in these attempts to contextualize Germany's Faustian bargain. After a consideration of Nietzsche's presence (and absence) in the novel Doktor Faustus, the article examines in detail the case Mann presents in his essay Nietzsche's Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung (1947). It is argued that, in this essay, Mann revisits and to a large extent re-affirms his earlier engagements with Nietzsche. The essay's apparent aim is to situate Nietzsche within recent German experience, yet beneath the objective reckoning with Germany's fate Mann undertakes a self-examination which tackles the question of Nietzsche's intellectual and emotional magnetism. Within this framework Mann discusses, often in a highly self-critical manner, questions of suffering, intellectual affinity and, most important of all, love. Mann's efforts to distance himself from Nietzsche serve only to underscore the extent of his debt to this enthralling yet deeply problematic figure. In the immediate post-war period, Mann's critical admiration for Nietzsche's character emerges essentially unchanged, alongside an enduring sympathy with his fate.

'Inviting Barbarism: Nietzsche's Will to Russia', in Germany and the Imagined East, ed. Lee M. Roberts (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005), pp. 80–93.

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference, University of California, Berkeley, March 2004

Final Ms. Identical to published version but with different pagination.

'Thomas Manns Nietzsche im Lichte der eigenen Erfahrung: Einkehr, Abrechnung, Selbstkritik'’, in Thomas Mann (1875–1955), ed. Walter Delabar and Bodo Plachta (Berlin: Weidler, 2005), pp. 239–54.

'Rocking the Boat? – Victims, Perpetrators and Günter Grass, Literary Reflections of Modern War, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 41 (2005), 187–99. (Special Issue of FMLS, ed. Nicholas Martin)

Peer-reviewed journal

This article analyses texts by Günter Grass, Gert Ledig, Richard Gabel and Wolfgang Borchert in the context of the extended debate in Germany over the legitimacy or otherwise of presenting Germans as sufferers and/or victims during the Second World War. It is argued that the texts in question transcend the often simplistic and reductive categories employed in this debate.

Key Words: Borchert, Wolfgang; Gabel, Richard; Grass, Günter; Ledig, Gert; bombing; suffering; perpetrators; victimhood.

'Breeding Greeks: Nietzsche, Gobineau and Classical Theories of Race', in Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition, ed. Paul Bishop (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), pp. 40–53.

Proceedings of the 2002 Friedrich Nietzsche Society Conference, 'Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition', held at the University of Glasgow

The paper examines aspects of Nietzsche’s thought in relation to important, if now discredited nineteenth-century theories of race and racial development. Nietzsche’s own remarks on ‘breeding’ and ‘race’ are considered, in particular their function in his theory of (Greek) cultural development.

Nietzsche’s observations are compared with Gobineau’s infamous yet influential Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (1853-55), and for three reasons: the parallels and contrasts between Gobineau’s and Nietzsche’s interpretations of the Greek achievement; the importance of Wagner as patron and promoter of both Nietzsche (for a while) and, later, Gobineau; and Nietzsche’s posthumous guilt by association, as Gobineau’s ideas were adopted by the Bayreuth Circle, eugenicists and biological racists, and eventually found their way, in bastardised form, into National Socialist theories of Rassenhygiene (“racial hygiene”).

The paper re-examines the extent to which Nietzsche was swayed by, or indeed implicated in contemporary racial(ist) theorising, and asks whether there is a racist undercurrent to Nietzsche’s thought. There is not, it will be argued, but his theory of cultural development, ancient and modern, is no less problematic for that. Nietzsche’s theory entails ethical, social and political consequences as unpalatable as any arguments based on race.

'"Fighting a Philosophy": The Figure of Nietzsche in British Propaganda of the First World War', Modern Language Review, 98 (2003), 367–80.

Peer-reviewed journal. (Repr. as 'Nietzsche as Hate-Figure in Britain’s Great War: "The Execrable Neech"', in The First World War as a Clash of Cultures, ed. Fred Bridgham (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), pp. 147–66.)

The article describes how Nietzsche's name became a focus for the expression of anti-German sentiment in writings by British opinion-formers and propagandists at the time of the First World War.

Drawing on a range of sources, this essay counters the view that Nietzsche's impact on British public opinon in 1914 was negligible. It is argued that the singular view of Nietzsche which emerged in Britain at this time was due not only to the demands of wartime propaganda but also to the malleability of Nietzsche's texts. The article emphasizes the irony of this exploitation, given Nietzsche's hostility to nationalism and ‘Germanness’.

'Nietzsche in the GDR: History of a Taboo', in Nietzsche and the German Tradition, ed. Nicholas Martin (Oxford and Berne:Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 263–86.

REVIEW -- Henning Ottmann (ed.), Nietzsche-Handbuch. Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2000), in Modern Language Review, 98 (2003), 770–771.

'Extremes of Nietzsche: "Wo sind die Barbaren des 20. Jahrhunderts?"', in Ecce Opus. Nietzsche-Revisionen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Rüdiger Görner and Duncan Large, Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies, 81 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 25–35.

Proceedings of 2000 Nietzsche Jubilee Conference, Institute of Germanic Studies, London

'Nietzsche’s "Schillerbild": A Re-evaluation', German Life and Letters 48 (1995), 516–539.

Peer-reviewed journal

'"Wie ich von Wagner loskam"', Nietzscheforschung 2 (1995), 257–263.

Peer-reviewed journal

'"We Good Europeans": Nietzsche's New Europe in Beyond Good and Evil', History of European Ideas 20 (1995), 141–144.

'Nietzsche under fire', Times Literary Supplement, 5 August 1994, 11–12.

Feature article on Nietzsche in British WW1 propaganda, published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

'Retying the Gordian Knot: Nietzsche and the Nineteenth Century', Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 6 (1993), 131–140.

Peer-reviewed journal