Erich Auerbach - Collected Works, incl. Mimesis (5 books)

* Erich Auerbach - Collected Works, incl. Mimesis (5 books)

ERICH AUERBACH (1892–1957) was a German philologist who stands as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century literary criticism and, along with Leo Spitzer, is widely recognized as one of the foundational figures of comparative literature. Auerbach developed a historically grounded approach to literature that treated style, language, and representation as inseparable from social and cultural realities. His career was shaped profoundly by exile: dismissed from his post by the Nazi regime, he spent the 1930s and 1940s teaching in Istanbul, where intellectual isolation and distance from major European libraries paradoxically sharpened his vision of Western literary history as a coherent, if deeply conflicted, whole. Auerbach’s work is marked by an intense commitment to close reading, coupled with a sweeping sense of historical continuity stretching from classical antiquity to modern realism.

His most famous and enduring work is MIMESIS: THE REPRESENTATION OF REALITY IN WESTERN LITERATURE (1946), frequently cited as a classic in the study of realism in literature. It traces how Western literature has depicted reality through a series of chapters, each devoted to a close reading of a single text or scene, from Homer and the Hebrew Bible to Virginia Woolf. His contrast between the fully illuminated, foregrounded world of Homer and the layered, morally charged narratives of biblical prose sets the tone for a book that argues realism is not merely a technique but a historically conditioned way of understanding human experience. Edward Said, in his introduction to the 50-year commemoration reprint from Princeton, hailed the book as "by far the largest in scope and ambition out of all the other important critical works of the past half century." The chapter on Homer in particular is not to be missed.

Another major work, DANTE: POET OF THE SECULAR WORLD (1929), reveals Auerbach’s ability to combine philological precision with large philosophical claims. In this study, Auerbach interprets Dante as a poet who fuses the earthly and the eternal, creating characters who are fully embedded in historical time yet fixed in their ultimate destinies. Dante’s greatness, for Auerbach, lies in his capacity to represent individual human lives with unprecedented concreteness while integrating them into a universal Christian order. The book anticipates many of the concerns later developed in Mimesis, particularly the idea that literary form reflects deep changes in how history and individuality are conceived.

Beyond these landmark texts, Auerbach’s influence is also carried through in collections such as SCENES FROM THE DRAMA OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE (1959) and LITERARY LANGUAGE AND ITS PUBLIC IN LATE LATIN ANTIQUITY AND IN THE MIDDLE AGES (1958). Seminal essays like “Figura” (1938), included in TIME, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE (2013), exemplify his method by showing how modes of representation structure historical perception itself, rather than merely reflecting it. Together, these writings articulate Auerbach’s enduring vision of European literature as a dynamic, historically embedded tradition—one unified by its evolving attempts to grasp reality across time.


The following books are in PDF and/or ePUB format as noted:

* Dante: Poet of the Secular World [tr. Manheim] (Chicago, 1974) – PDF^
* Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages [tr. Manheim] (Princeton, 1993) – PDF^
* Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature [tr. Trask] (Princeton, 2003) – ePUB / PDF^
* Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Minnesota, 1984) –- PDF^
* Time, History, and Literature: Selected Essays [ed. Porter] (Princeton, 2014) – ePUB / PDF

PDF^ courtesy of Mohamed5438


Please seed and share with others. 🙂