Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin

SU Yan

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SU Yan. Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2018, 1(3): 431-444.

Citation:

SU Yan. Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2018, 1(3): 431-444.

SU Yan. Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2018, 1(3): 431-444.

Citation:

SU Yan. Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2018, 1(3): 431-444.

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Dialectics of Melancholy: The Succession and Development of Erwin Panofsky's Interpretation of Dürer in Walter Benjamin

SU Yan

Beijing Normal University

Received Date: 2018-03-21
Rev Recd Date: 2018-04-08

Abstract

Abstract

"Melancholy" is an important concept of Walter Benjamin. In Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Benjamin elaborates his unique art-cultural criticism by reading Albrecht Dürer's Melancholie Ⅰ. Bypassing Freudian psychoanalysis of "melancholy," he takes the path of Erwin Panofsky's art-historical interpretation of Dürer. For Panofsky, Dürer's engraving has challenged the negative comments on "melancholy" prevalent since the medieval age and given it a positive value of humanism. By appropriating this humanist interpretation, Benjamin views Melancholie Ⅰ as the criticism of modernity in the early modern period. He argues that, "World of Things" and "knowing by sinking" in Dürer's engraving are both his reflections of the Enlightenment and Kantian confidence of human reason. He points out that, the so called human reason on the one hand leads to the separation of subject and object and produces a mechanical world, on the other hand, it also situates political communities in crisis with perpetual turmoil-both of them make it impossible to make true political decisions.
- Melancholy,
- Walter Benjamin,
- Erwin Panofsky,
- Albrecht Dürer,
- Humanism,
- Criticism of modernity

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References(31)

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