Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis. Michael W. Jennings is Class of 1900 Professor of Modern Languages at Princeton University. Brigid Doherty is Associate Professor of German and of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Thomas Y. Levin is Associate Professor of German at Princeton University.

• * A Note on the Texts * Editors' Introduction I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art * The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version * Theory of Distraction * To the Planetarium * Garlanded Entrance * The Rigorous Study of Art * Imperial Panorama * The Telephone * The Author as Producer * Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century * Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian * Review of Sternberger's Panorama II. Script, Image, Script-Image * Attested Auditor of Books * This Space for Rent * The Antinomies of Allegorical Exegesis * The Ruin * Dismemberment of Language * Graphology Old and New III. Painting and Graphics * Painting and the Graphic Arts * On Painting, or Sign and Mark * A Glimpse into the World of Children's Books * Dream Kitsch * Moonlit Nights on the Rue La Boetie * Chambermaids' Romances of the Past Century * Antoine Wiertz: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head * Some Remarks on Folk Art * Chinese Paintings at the Bibliotheque Nationale IV. Photography * News about Flowers * Little History of Photography * Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography * Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siecle V. Film * On the Present Situation of Russian Film * Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz * Chaplin * Chaplin in Retrospect * Mickey Mouse * The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression VI. The Publishing Industry and Radio * Journalism * A Critique of the Publishing Industry * The Newspaper * Karl Kraus * Reflections on Radio * Theater and Radio * Conversation with Ernst Schoen * Two Types of Popularity: Fundamental Reflections on a Radio Play * On the Minute * Index

Until recently, Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, was available to English-speaking readers only in the version that appeared in the 1968 collection Illuminations. Harvard’s new volume of the German cultural critic’s writings on media offers as its title-piece an earlier, edgier incarnation—the second of three composed between 1935 and 1939—in a superior translation… Throughout The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, Benjamin’s startling, often oblique language reveals his subjects from unexpected angles… This volume amply demonstrates the keenness and ingenuity of Benjamin’s intuitions at the dawn of modern media culture.