Books by Theodore Ziolkowski

Many novels revolve round the figure of Jesus. Some of the finest of them are defined by Ziolkowski as fictional transfigurations of Jesus. They share a modern hero patterned on Jesus the culture-hero, whose life consisted of the motifs of the last supper, lonely agony, betrayal, trial, and crucifixion. The aesthetic challenge of adapting this most familiar story for their generation has attracted an unusual number of great writers, among them Papini, Kazantzakis, Hesse, Mann, Greene, Faulkner, and Gore Vidal. The form began with the new image of a humanized Jesus which developed in the 19th century. The interest in religious paranoia and hysteria at the turn of the century instantly expanded its potentialities as novelists began to explore the theme of christomania. This was followed by studies of Jesus as a mythic figure and then Marxist-oriented portraits of Comrade Jesus. Finally the form became inverted into parody in the Fifth Gospels in which not Jesus, but Judas, is the central figure.

Explores five institutions - mining, law, madhouses, universities, and museums - that provide the socio-historical context for German Romantic culture. This book shows how German writers and thinkers helped to shape these five institutions, all of which assumed their modern form during the Romantic period.

After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco's notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact "a secret without content."

The triumph of avant-gardes in the 1920s tends to dominate our discussions of the music, art, and literature of the period. In this book, the author offers a compelling account of that movement. Focusing on the works of Stravinsky, Picasso, and T S Eliot, It shows how the turn to classicism manifested itself.

After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco's notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact "a secret without content."

Using principles from the anthropological theory of legal evolution, this book locates the works, which reflect crises in the evolution of Western law in their legal contexts and traces through them the gradual dissociation over the centuries of law and morality.