Joel B. Lande
· Associate ProfessorVerifiedPrinceton University · German
Active 2010–2025
About
Joel B. Lande is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the German Department at Princeton University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and was awarded a fellowship by the Princeton University Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Since July 2014, he has served as an Assistant Professor in the department. Lande has spent extensive time at European universities, including Universität Konstanz, Universität Basel, and Humboldt Universität in Berlin. His academic interests encompass eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century German literature, especially drama, as well as broader European literature, classical antiquity and its receptions, and the German philosophical tradition from Leibniz to Wittgenstein, along with its contemporary interpretations. His work explores the relationship between literary form and transformations in other spheres of knowledge from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Lande is the author of 'Persistence of Folly: On the Origins of German Dramatic Literature,' which examines the role of the fool in the emergence of German dramatic literature and its significance across various discursive fields. He has also co-edited volumes on Baroque figures, anomalies in the German issue of MLN, and a global history of literatures. His recent essays focus on theater history, aesthetics, the history of science, and early modern political thought.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Humanities
- Art
- Philosophy
- History
- Linguistics
- Literature
- Library science
- Epistemology
- Mathematics
- Archaeology
Selected publications
2025-03-12
bookGoethe fungierte bis weit ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein als ein Nationalschriftsteller der USA. Die Rezeption beginnt bei den Transzendentalisten um Ralph Waldo Emerson und Margaret Fuller, wird ausgeformt in der US-amerikanischen Literatur der Jahrhundertwende und neu akzentuiert durch die Autorinnen und Autoren, die nach 1933 aus Deutschland in die USA emigrierten. Die Aufsätze in diesem Band fragen nach den literarischen wie ideengeschichtlichen Wechselverhältnissen und rekonstruieren im Zusammenspiel eine transatlantische Faszinationsgeschichte.
The Literary Grammar of Entrances: On the Work of Juliane Vogel
The Germanic Review Literature Culture Theory · 2024-07-02
article1st authorCorrespondingThe Dramaturgy of Demise: On Goethe’s <i>Der Groß-Cophta</i>
The Germanic Review Literature Culture Theory · 2024-07-02
article1st authorCorrespondingPersistence of Folly: On the Origins of German Dramatic Literature
eCommons (Cornell University) · 2023-05-09 · 18 citations
bookOpen access1st authorCorrespondingJoel B. Lande’s Persistence of Folly challenges the accepted account of the origins of German theater by focusing on the misunderstood figure of the fool, whose spontaneous and impish jest captivated audiences, critics, and playwrights from the late sixteenth through the early nineteenth century. Lande radically expands the scope of literary historical inquiry, showing that the fool was not a distraction from attempts to establish a serious dramatic tradition in the German language. Instead, the fool was both a fixture on the stage and a nearly ubiquitous theme in an array of literary critical, governmental, moral-philosophical, and medical discourses, figuring centrally in broad-based efforts to assign laughter a proper time, place, and proportion in society. Persistence of Folly reveals the fool as a cornerstone of the dynamic process that culminated in the works of Lessing, Goethe, and Kleist. By reorienting the history of German theater, Lande’s work conclusively shows that the highpoint of German literature around 1800 did not eliminate irreverent jest in the name of serious drama, but instead developed highly refined techniques for integrating the comic tradition of the stage fool.
Literature and the All too Human:
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte · 2023 · 1 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Computer Science
- Philosophy
- Literature
The German Quarterly · 2023
1st authorCorresponding- Humanities
- Art
- Humanities
Monatshefte · 2022-04-01
article1st authorCorrespondingZeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie · 2022
1st authorCorresponding- Humanities
- Humanities
- Mathematics
„Vom Tempel auf die Straße“ Richard Alewyn. Stilist des Allzumenschlichen
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie. Sonderheft · 2022-01-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingVon Anfang an haust die Frage nach dem Stil im Werk Richard Alewyns.1 Doch ist zunächst festzuhalten, dass der Begriff des Stils expressis verbis eigentlich ausschließlich in den Erstlingswerken des damals blutjungen Gelehrten auftritt und zwar an programmatischer Stelle: Denn nur in den Qualifikationstexten aus den 1920er und 30er Jahren – das heißt aus der Zeit vor der Vertreibung und dem Exil, die ihn auf eine Zwangswanderschaft durch Westeuropa und in die USA führen sollte – dient der Stilbegriff als expliziter Leitfaden seiner Deutungen. Jene Studien, die sich allesamt mit dem Barockzeitalter beschäftigen und aus heutiger Sicht auf diesem Forschungsfeld einen bleibenden Beitrag leisteten, bemühen sich um ein Stilverständnis, welches mehr als eine spezifisch disziplinär-literaturwissenschaftliche Signatur trägt.2
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-08-02
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 1 shared
Thomas Meißner
- 1 shared
Christoph Binkelmann
- 1 shared
Martin Wagner
- 1 shared
Manuel Bauer
- 1 shared
Beate Allert
- 1 shared
Marc-Georg Dehrmann
- 1 shared
Anna Braungart
- 1 shared
Christopher Busch
Awards & honors
- fellowship by the Princeton University Society of Fellows in…
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