Walter Benjamin, Passagen-Werk [Arcades Project]

Holger Pausch (University of Alberta)
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Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the prolific German-Jewish author of numerous essays on literary and cultural analysis for magazines and newspapers in the 1930s. In the course the 1960s he became celebrated as one of the legendary Marxist cultural critics and theorists of the twentieth century, in spite of his renowned and notorious

Arcades Project

, an astounding critical portrait of the Parisian bourgeoisie in the second part of the nineteenth century. The

Project

was never completed as the

magnum opus

he intended it to be. In its final state, the

Arcades Project

consists of materials Benjamin had accumulated between 1927 and 1940, the year of his suicide at the French-Spanish border after he fled the German occupation of Paris. Roughly 15,000 seemingly trivial items of…

1857 words

Citation: Pausch, Holger. "Passagen-Werk". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5738, accessed 19 March 2024.]

5738 Passagen-Werk 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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