Marx, Engels, and the poets : origins of Marxist literary critics / revised and enlarged by the author and translated by Jeffrey L. Sammons.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-272) and index.

1. Young Friedrich Engels as a critic : A literary model: Karl Gutzkow -- The political perspective: Ludwig Borne -- Philosophical radicalism: the Young Hegelians --

2. Economics and intellect: Thomas Carlyle : Friedrich Engels as Carlyle's translator -- The "film" of literature --

3. On the way to economic determinism: Karl Marx : The young poet -- Visions and theories (1844) -- Doubts and dogmas (1857-59) --

4. Conflicts and discussions : Personal contacts: Marx, Engels and Heine -- George Herwegh -- Karl Marx's commentary on Eugene Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris -- Mar and Engel's criticism of Ferdinand LaSalle's Franz von Sickingen --

5. The later Engels as a critic of Marxist literary doctrine : A different taste -- A theory of socialist realism? -- Engels as a revisionist? --

6. Three interpretations: Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac : Shakespeare -- Goethe -- Balzac --

7. The first disciples : A survey of developments -- Franz Mehring (1846-1919) -- Georg Valentinovich Plekhanov (1857-1918) --

8. George Lukacs as a theoretician of literature : The Heidelberg period -- The doctrinaire period -- Idealist and doctrinaire: some continuities -- The octogenarian Lukacs: on the way to Aristotle --

9. Marxist criticism: past and present.

"Marx, Engels and the Poets is at once an exercise in cultural history and a study of the intellectual vicissitudes of remarkable men who formulated some of the most fateful ideas of our age, This revised, enlarged, and newly translated work traces the dependence of Marxist literary theory and criticism, articulated in scattered writings of Marx and Engels, to German radicalism in the age of Hegel. Unlike present day scholars in Communist countries, Peter Demetz distinguishes the individual contributions of Marx and Engels and describes their changing attitudes toward literature. He analyzes Marx's almost mythic view as expressed in early philosophical speculations; assertions of the influence of economics upon intellectual life as developed by Marx and Engels in the early years of their collaboration; Marx's recurrent doubts about his own dogmatic solutions; and Engels' attempts to suggest a flexible relationship between economics and the arts. Of succeeding generations of critics who sought to apply Marxist theory to literature, Mr. Demetz discusses the Russian Plekhanov, the German Franz Mehring, and the Hungarian George Lukacs, and touches upon the thoughts of Theodor Adorno, Hans Mayer, and the French philosopher Lucien Goldman." -- From the dust jacket.

Translated from German into English.