Dr Angus Nicholls
Lecturer in German and Comparative Literature

Location: Arts One 2.11
email: a.j.nicholls@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: (+44) 020-7882-2683
Fax: (+44) 020-8980-5400

On research leave from October 2011until April 2013 as Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Institut für Literaturwissenschaft Universität Stuttgart)

Angus Nicholls convenes the CAGCR programme in Intellectual History. He is co-editor of the Yearbook for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, ANGERMION, and convenor of Queen Mary’s MA Programme in Anglo-German Cultural Relations. He serves on the Council of the English Goethe Society and on the Editorial Board of the Publications of the English Goethe Society.

Areas of Specialisation

The relationship between literature and the natural sciences in nineteenth century Britain and Germany; theories of myth; comparative approaches to English and German Romanticisms; Goethe and his philosophical contemporaries (especially Hamann, Herder, Kant and Schelling); German critical theory and philosophical hermeneutics (especially Wilhelm Dilthey, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg); philosophical and literary influences upon psychoanalysis; Germans in Australia (Ludwig Leichhardt, Carl Strehlow); contemporary Australian poetry (especially Robert Gray, Robert Adamson and John Forbes).

Current Research Projects

Literature and Boundaries of Science
Angus Nicholls is currently working on a book project, provisionally entitled Literature and the Boundaries of Science in Nineteenth Century Britain and Germany, focusing on three case studies involving boundary confrontations between research methodologies used in the natural sciences and the developing field of literary studies.

Myth and Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg on Myth
This will be the first English-language monograph on Hans Blumenberg’s theory of myth, contracted to the series Routledge Theorists of Myth.

Germans in Australia: Ludwig Leichhardt
Angus Nicholls currently has two book chapters in press that deal with the nineeteenth-century German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, who inspired Patrick White’s epic novel Voss. Listen here to Angus Nicholls speaking to the ABC Radio National Book Show about Leichhardt’s influence on Patrick White.

Select Publications

Monographs

  • Goethe's Concept of the Daemonic: After the Ancients. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006. 328 pp. ISBN: 1-57113-307-0. A short description of this volume can be found here.

Edited Volumes

  • (with Rüdiger Görner), In the Embrace of the Swan: Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010). ISBN: 978-3-11-020958-7. Further info here
  • (with Martin Liebscher), Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). ISBN-13: 9780521897532. Further into here.

Edited Issues of Periodicals

  • (with Rüdiger Görner and Michael Kooy), ANGERMION: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers, Volume 3 (Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2010). ISBN: 9783110222708.
  • (with Rüdiger Görner and Michael Kooy), ANGERMION: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers, Volume 2 (Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2009). ISBN: 3110207869.
  • (with Daniel Purdy), Special Section on Goethe and Twentieth-Century Theory in The Goethe Yearbook 16 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009). ISBN: 9781571133960.
  • (with Rüdiger Görner and Michael Kooy), ANGERMION: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers, Volume 1 (Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2008). ISSN: 1438-2091.

Book Chapters and Articles in Refereed Journals Published and In Press (selection since 2005)

  • “Between Natural and Human Science: Scientific Method in Goethe’s Noten und Abhandlungen zum West-östlichen Divan.” In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 80, no.1 (2011): 1-18.
  • “Scientific Literary Criticism in the Work of Wilhelm Dilthey and Matthew Arnold.” In: Comparative Critical Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 7-31.
  • “The Fremdling of Teleology, or: On Roger Smith’s Being Human.” In: History of the Human Sciences, 23, no.5 (2010): 194-201.
  • (with Martin Liebscher), “Introduction: Thinking the Unconscious.” In: Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought, ed. Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, in press).
  • “The Scientific Unconscious: Goethe’s Post-Kantian Epistemology.” In: Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought, ed. Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, in press).
  • “Das Spannungsverhältnis von Wissenschaft und Mythologie in Deutschland um 1800 und in Großbritannien um 1850-1900.” In:Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Begriffsgeschichte. Terminologische Umbrüche im Entstehungsprozess der modernen Wissenschaften, ed. Michael Eggers and Matthias Rothe (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009). ISBN: 978-3-8376-1184-7. Further info here.
  • “Goethe and Twentieth-Century Theory: An Introduction.” In: The Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009): 163-172.
  • “The Inadequacy of Life: Observations on Adorno.” In: History of the Human Sciences 20, no. 4 (2007): 147-166.
  • “Anglo-German Mythologics: The Australian Aborigines and Modern Theories of Myth in the Work of Baldwin Spencer and Carl Strehlow.” In: History of the Human Sciences 20, no. 1 (2007): 83-114. Abstract available here.
  • “The Subject-Object of Wissenschaft: On Wilhelm Dilthey’s Goethebilder.” In: Colloquia Germanica 39, no.1 (2006): 69-86.
  • “The Philosophical Concept of the Daemonic in Goethe’s Mächtiges Überraschen.” In: Goethe Yearbook 14 (2006): 147-70.
  • “The Hermeneutics of Scientific Language in Goethe’s Critique of Newton.” In: Sprachkunst 36, no. 2 (2005): 203-26; reprinted in: Passagen: 50 Jahre Germanistik an der Monash University, ed. Franz-Josef Deiters, Axel Fliethmann and Christiane Weller (St. Ingbert: Roerhig Universitaets Verlag, 2010), 519-558.
  • “On Science and Subjectivity.” In: History of the Human Sciences 18, no. 1 (2005): 143-58.

Articles in Refereed Online Journals

  • “Goethe, Romanticism, and the Anglo-American Critical Tradition.” In: Romanticism on the Net 28 (November 2002). Online here.
  • “The Secularisation of Revelation from Plato to Freud.” In: Contretemps: An Online Journal of Philosophy 1 (September 2000). Online here.

Recent Review Essays

  • "Weltliteratur and the Crises of Comparative Literature." IASL Online (July 2009). Online here.

Recent Reviews (selection since 2004)

  • Dye, Ellis. Love and Death in Goethe: ‘One and Double’. In: Sprachkunst 36, no. 1 (2005): 177-81.
  • Masson, Scott. Romanticism, Hermeneutics and the Crisis of the Human Sciences. In: British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review 27 (March 2005): 39-41.
  • Viereck, Peter. Metapolitics: from Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler. In: Australian Journal of Political Science 40, no. 1 (2005): 167-68.
  • Grondin, Jean. Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography. In: H-German (November 2004). Online here.

Select Publications and Reviews on Australian Literature and Culture in Refereed Journals

  • Review of: Forbes, John. Collected Poems 1970-1998. In: Antipodes 16, no.1 (2002): 86-87
  • (co-authored with Soe Tjen Marching) “Australia’s Indonesia, Indonesia’s Australia.” In: Antipodes 16, no. 2 (2002): 183-85.
  • Review of: Adamson, Robert. Black Water: Approaching Zukofsky. In: Antipodes 13, no. 2 (1999).
  • “Robert Gray and Robert Adamson: A Dialectical Study of Late Australian Romanticism.” In: Antipodes 11, no. 2 (1997): 103-10.

Translations

  • Seel, Martin. “Adorno’s Contemplative Ethics” (translation of “Adornos kontemplative Ethik”). In: Critical Horizons 5, no. 1 (2004): 259-70; reprinted in: Contemporary Perspectives in Critical and Social Philosophy. Ed. John Rundell (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

Conference Reports

  • "Mozart: A Challenge for Literature and Thought, Queen Mary, University of London, 5-7 April 2006". In: Eighteenth Century Music 3, no. 2 (2006): 373-76.

Conferences, Panels and Research Colloquia Organised

  • Panel on “Goethe’s Poetics of Science”, Close Encounters (4th European Biannual Conference of the Society for Science, Literature and the Arts), University of Amsterdam, June 13-16, 2006.
  • (Co-organised with Martin Liebscher) The Concept of the Unconscious in Nineteenth Century German Thought, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, September 21-22, 2006.
  • (Co-organised with Rüdiger Görner)Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory, Queen Mary, University of London, April 25-27, 2007.
  • Anglo-German Mythologies Research Colloquium, held at Queen Mary University of London during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 academic sessions.
  • Panels on "Goethe and Twentieth Century Theory", German Studies Association 31st Annual Conference, San Diego, October 4-7, 2007
  • Anglo-German Poetologies Research Colloquium, held at Queen Mary University of London during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic sessions.

Teaching