{"product_id":"dicta-and-contradicta-9780252026485","title":"Dicta and Contradicta","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDicta and Contradicta\u003c\/strong\u003e by Kraus, Karl. Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780252026485.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A woman is more than just her exterior. The lingerie is also important.\"\n\n\"The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.\"\n\n\"Art serves to rinse out our eyes.\"\nUniquely combining humor with profundity and venom with compassion, Dicta and Contradicta is a bonanza of scandalous wit from Viennas answer to Oscar Wilde.\n\nFrom the decadent turn of the century to the Third Reich, the acerbic satirist Karl Kraus was one of the most famous–and feared–intellectuals in Europe. Through the polemical and satirical magazine Die Fackel (The torch), which he founded in 1899, Kraus launched wicked but unrelentingly witty attacks on literary and media corruption, sexual repression and militarism, and the social hypocrisy of fin-de-siècle Vienna.\n\nKrauss barbed aphorisms were an essential part of his running commentary on Viennese culture. These miniature gems, as sharp as diamonds, demonstrate Krauss highly cultivated wit and his unerring eye for human weakness, flaccidity, and hypocrisy. Kraus shies away from nothing; the salient issues of the day are lined up side by side, as before a firing squad, with such perennial concerns as sexuality, religion, politics, art, war, and literature. By turns antagonistic, pacifistic, realistic, and maddeningly misogynistic, Krauss aphorisms provide the sting that precedes healing.\n\nFor Dicta and Contradicta, originally published in 1909 (with the title Spruche und Widerspruche) and revised in 1923, Kraus selected nearly 1,000 of the scathing aphorisms that had appeared in Die Fackel. In this new translation, Jonathan McVity masterfully renders Krauss multilayered meanings, preserving the clever wordplay of the German in readable colloquial English. He also provides an introductory essay on Krauss life and milieu and annotations that clarify many of Krauss literary and sociohistorical allusions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"University of Illinois Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666408071221,"sku":"ByrdShop_0252026489","price":49.57,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780252026485_f93dca7a-eee2-4370-a942-8d77aecf3295.jpg?v=1782462425","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/dicta-and-contradicta-9780252026485","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}