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11%OFFJohn Griffith Urang - Legal Tender - 9780801476532 - V9780801476532
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Legal Tender

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Description for Legal Tender Paperback. Series: Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought. Num Pages: 256 pages, 6, black & white halftones. BIC Classification: 1DFGE; 3JJP; HBTB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 15. Weight in Grams: 332.

At first glance, romance seems an improbable angle from which to write a cultural history of the German Democratic Republic. By most accounts the GDR was among the most dour and disciplined of socialist states, so devoted to the rigors of Stalinist aesthetics that the notion of an East German romantic comedy was more likely to generate punch lines than lines at the box office. But in fact, as John Urang shows in Legal Tender, love was freighted as a privileged site for the negotiation and reorganization of a surprising array of issues in East German public culture between 1949 ... Read more

Throughout its forty-year existence the East German state was plagued with an ongoing problem of legitimacy. The love story's unique and unpredictable mix of stabilizing and subversive effects gave it a peculiar status in the cultural sphere. Urang shows how love stories could mediate the problem of social stratification, providing a language with which to discuss the experience of class antagonism without undermining the Party's legitimacy. But for the Party there was danger in borrowing legitimacy from the romantic plot: the love story's destabilizing influences of desire and drive could just as easily disrupt as reconcile. A unique contribution to German studies, Legal Tender offers remarkable insights into the uses and capacities of romance in modern Western culture.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2010
Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
256
Condition
New
Series
Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought
Number of Pages
236
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801476532
SKU
V9780801476532
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About John Griffith Urang
John Griffith Urang is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Reed College.

Reviews for Legal Tender
John Griffith Urang examines the narrative of love as it appeared in East German popular culture. Since East Germany is largely absent from popular culture in the West, this is a compelling premise on two levels. Firstly, it reminds us that East Germany had a popular culture of its own, in contrast to the gray, undefined impression that we may ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Legal Tender


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