The enormous commentary on Hesse rarely takes this Pietist context seriously, but according to Stephenson, it is impossible to understand Hesse without understanding Pietism.... Stephenson's argument is compelling and its implications are striking.... Clearly and engagingly written, thoroughly rooted in Hesse's work and the vast commentary on Hesse, Stephenson's book is a fine general introduction to Hesse, as well as a powerful argument about the roots of Hesse's art. An important contribution to Hesse studies, Veneration and Revolt also contributes significantly to the ongoing debate about the origins, meanings, and trajectories of modernity.
Robert Weldon Whalen, Queens University of Charlotte
German Studies Review, 34/3, 2011, 201111 Taking his title from Hesse, Barry Stephenson has given us the first thorough appreciation of the Nobel Prize
winner within the religious culture from which he emerged. Hesse's debt to pietism, against which he rebelled yet which he always venerated as his spiritual heritage, was long a commonplace. But no previous scholar approached the problematic topic with the requisite background in religious studies that informs this book. Beginning with the history of Pietism and its role in Swabia and German Romanticism, it moves through Hesse's life and oeuvre, exposing significant new dimensions from his early 'religion of art' to The Glass Bead Game. This major and highly readable contribution forces us to contemplate Hesse's novels in a wholly original and edifying light.
Theodore Ziolkowski, Princeton University, author of Modes of Faith (2007), and Minos and the Moderns (2008)
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