Research

Professor Hilda Meldrum Brown has published widely on German literary topics from Goethe to Christa Wolf and is internationally known for her work on Heinrich von Kleist. Her research has for some years had a strong interdisciplinary bias and involves studying connections between literature, drama, music, the visual arts, especially in the field of German Romanticism and Richard Wagner. Her new book on the Gesamtkunstwerk and Richard Wagner combines a number of these areas of research and has been supported by The Leverhulme Trust (Emeritus Research Fellowship) and a Hawthornden Fellowship at The International Retreat for Writers.

Publications

Books

• The Quest for the Gesamtkunstwerk and Richard Wagner.
  
  H.M. Brown. Oxford University Press, 2016 (304 pp)
• Critique and Creativity: E.T.A. Hoffman and the Development of the Serapiontic Principle.
  
  H.M. Brown. Camden House, New York, 2006. (211 pp)
• Heinrich von Kleist. The Ambiguity of Art and the Necessity of Form.
  
  H.M. Brown. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1998. (409 pp)
• Leitmotiv and Drama. Wagner, Brecht and the limits of 'epic' theatre.
  
  H.M. Brown. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, reprinted 1993. (210 pp)
• Kleist's Lost Year and the Quest for 'Robert Guiskard'.
  
  R.H. Samuel & H.M. Brown. James Hall (Publishing) Ltd, Leamington Spa 1981. (126 pp)
• Kleist and the Tragic Ideal.
  
  H.M. Brown. Berne and Frankfurt 1977. (149 pp)

Articles

• 'Richard Wagner and the "Zurich Writings" 1849–51: From Revolution to Ring'. The Wagner Journal vol. 8 no. 2 (July 2014), pp. 28-42.
• 'From "Wohlklang" to "schauderhaftes Gebrüll": musical violence and "Affektenlehre" in Kleist's "Die Heilige Cäcilie" ', in Constructive and Destructive Functions of Violence in the work of Heinrich von Kleist (Königshausen & Neumann Verlag, 2012), pp. 265-277.
• 'Changing Perceptions of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century German Theater from Goethe to Wagner, with Reference to Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg' in Heinrich von Kleist and Modernity, ed. Bernd Fischer and Tim Mehigan (Camden House, Rochester, New York, 2011), pp. 131-143.
• 'Heinrich von Kleist's 'Poetology of the extreme' in the light of Freud and Aristotle'. Publications of the English Goethe Society vol. LXXVIII nos. 1-2 (2009), pp. 22-31.
• 'Hieroglyph and Arabesque and the problems of collaboration in Romantic 'Buchkunst'.' Oxford German Studies vol. 37 no. 2 (2008), pp. 207-226.
• 'The theatre of dissent from Sturm und Drang to Brecht', Chapter 7 in A History of German Theatre, ed. Maik Hamburger and Simon Williams. Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp.146-170.
• 'Der Blick Hinaus: Deutsche Literatur und 'Weltliteratur' im Zeitalter der Romantik', to appear in Proceedings of the Internationale Vereinigung für Germanistik, Paris 2005.
• 'Goethe and Hoffmann on Manier', in Oxford German Studies, vol. 33, 2004, pp. 149-165. Special number for T.J. Reed.
• 'False climaxes and ripe moments: thematic and dramatic configurations of the theme of death in Kleist's works', in A Companion to the works of Heinrich von Kleist, ed. Bernd Fischer (Boydell & Brewer, January 2003), pp. 309-336.
• 'Reading 'The drowned girl': A Brecht poem and its contexts', in Empedocles' Shoe, Essays on Brecht's Poetry, ed. Karen Leeder and Tom Kuhn (Methuen, 2002), pp. 72-88.
• 'Goethe and the (English) Landscape Improvers - a theme in Die Wahlverwandtschaften', in Goethe at 250, ed. T.J.Reed, M.Swales and J.Adler, London German Studies VI, iudicium, Munich, 2000.
• 'Germania and Italia: reflections on a theme in the works of E.T.A.Hoffmann', Publications of the English Goethe Society, vol.70, 2000, pp. 1-12.
• 'Wann ist der Starke am Mächtigsten? Über Helden und Zuschauer bei Kleist', Heinrich von Kleist und die Aufklärung, ed. T. Mehigan, Camden House 2000, pp. 211-225.
• 'Mädchen und Mode bei Heinrich von Kleist', in Resonanzen. Festschrift für Hans Joachim Kreutzer zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. S.Doering, W.Maierhofer and P.P.Riedl, Königshausen und Neumann 2000, pp. 283-290.
• 'Authentizität und Fiktion: Christa Wolfs Kleistbild'. Kleist-Jahrbuch 1995, pp. 167-182.
• 'Das Malerische und das Erhabene. Kleist und die englischen Empfindungen vor Landschaften'. Kleist-Jahrbuch 1994, pp.49-66.
• 'Kleists Lebensspuren um 1804 : Eine Antwort an Helmut Sembdner'. Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft XXXVI, 1992, pp. 84-94.
• 'Kleists Theorie des Dramas - im Licht neuer Funde', in Heinrich von Kleist, ed. Dirk Grathoff, Opladen 1988 (2nd ed. 1990).
• 'Between Plagiarism and Parody: the function of the Rimbaud quotations in Brecht's Im Dickicht der Städte '. The Modern Language Review 1987, pp. 662-674.
• 'Goethe in the Underworld: Proserpina/Persephone'. Oxford German Studies 15, 1984, pp. 145-159.
• 'Der Chor und chorverwandte Elemente im deutschen Drama des 19. Jahrhunderts und bei Heinrich von Kleist'. Kleist-Jahrbuch 1981-2, pp. 240-260.
• 'Diderot and Kleist', in Heinrich von Kleist Studies, ed. A. Ugrinsky, New York and Berlin 1980, pp. 139-145.
• 'Musik als Wurzel aller Künste : Kleist en route to an Aesthetic?'. Seminar 1979, pp. 190-205.
• 'Zwischen Erde und Himmel: Kleist and the Visual Arts, with special reference to Caspar David Friedrich'. German Life and Letters 1978, pp. 157-166.
• 'Kleist in Paris, 1804'. Seminar 1977, pp. 88-98.
• 'Penthesilea : Nightingale and Amazon?' Oxford German Studies 1972-3, pp 24-33.
• 'Kleist's Über das Marionettentheater : 'Schlüssel zum Werk' or 'Feuilleton' ?' Oxford German Studies 1968, pp. 114-25.