The Origin of German Tragic Drama Book

This is a difficult work even by Benjamin's standards. If one is willing to reread, it is well worth the effort. It sets out Benjamin's notion of truth (something like a platonic materialism) and coordinates it with a theory of genre and a theory of history. Benjamin doesn't just produce an exposition of these topics, however. He (as Martin Heidegger might put it) sets truth to work - he tries to enact truth through literary criticism, to, as he puts it, burn away the husk of the work in order to reveal its truth, the potency of its history. Benjamin may, at times, seem as if he is rambling (he alludes to this himself by considering his work a treatise founded on digression), but there is a nonetheless the consistency of a well-thought out work. Reading this work besides Carl Schmitt's Political Theology (Benjamin actually sent a copy of this book to Schmitt) and Benjamin's essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities is quite helpful.