Early Frankfurt School and Poetics

Early Frankfurt School and Poetics
Edited by Lukas Hoffman & George Kovalenko

Despite the significant and longstanding influence of the Institute for Social Research and its affiliates—commonly referred to as the Frankfurt School—on the modern and contemporary study of poetry and poetics, there has been, heretofore, no singular comprehensive study of the subject. Acknowledging the extensive scholarship exploring the Frankfurt School's contributions to aesthetics more broadly, as well as individual members' connections to poetry—such as Adorno's engagement with the socio-political dimension of lyric, Benjamin's reception of Goethe, Hölderlin, and Baudelaire, and Marcuse's perspectives on aesthetics—this study seeks to bring these disparate analyses into conversation with each other, with a particular emphasis on the form and function of poetry. Thus, this edited volume aims to fill this gap in scholarship by providing a cohesive exploration of the Frankfurt School's collective influence on poetic theory and practice with a focus on broader implications for critical theory and poetic form.

We invite contributions that offer interventions, revisions, and provocations on the poetics of the Institute’s members and affiliates from its founding in 1923 to Adorno’s death in 1969. Specifically, we are soliciting submissions focused on Fromm, Horkheimer, Löwenthal, and Marcuse. We would be especially eager to read proposals for comparative studies which engage these thinkers with poetics from outside the Anglophone or German traditions. Contributors are encouraged to reconsider the poem as a site of theoretical, political, and critical potential. “Poetics” should be understood broadly, encompassing themes such as readings of the Frankfurt School’s often discordant literary theories, the historicity and/or materiality of poetic form, analysis of poetic responses to the Frankfurt School, the relation between poetics and democracy, and the members’ own notable poetic productions.

Interested parties should submit a 250-word abstract to: lukas.hoffman.phd@gmail.com. We aim to solicit abstracts by the end of August 2024 and to submit the book proposal to publishers soon after. Authors will be kept up to date on all steps in the submission process.

Dr. Lukas Hoffman, Postdoctoral Fellow, College of Fellows, Universität Tübingen
Dr. George Kovalenko, Visiting Scholar, Jordan Center, New York University