This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the thought of the highly influential twentieth-century critic and theorist Walter Benjamin.
List of contributorsList of abbreviations and short titlesChronologyIntroduction : Reading Benjamin11Walter Benjamin and the European avant-garde182Art forms353Language and mimesis in Walter Benjamin's work544Walter Benjamin's concept of cultural history735Benjamin's Modernity976Benjamin and psychoanalysis1157Benjamin and the ambiguitics of Romanticism1348Body politics : Benjamin's dialectical materialism between Brecht and the Frankfurt School1529Method and time : Benjamin's dialectical images18710Benjamin's phantasmagoria : the Arcades Project19911Acts of self-portraiture : Benjamin's confessional and literary writings221Guide to further reading238Index242