Staiger was born on 8 February 1908 in
Kreuzlingen,
Switzerland. After graduating from school, Emil Staiger first studied theology before switching to German and classical philology. After studying at the Universities of
Geneva,
Zurich and
Munich, he received his doctorate in Zurich in 1932 with a thesis on
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. From 1932 to 1934 he was a member of the
National Front (Switzerland), from which he publicly distanced himself in 1935. In 1934 he completed his time at the University of Zurich with a thesis on
Schelling,
Hegel and
Hölderlin. That same year, he became a private lecturer in German literature at Zurich. In 1943, he was appointed to a
professorship. Staiger's importance in the field of German literature was founded in his widely acclaimed publications
Die Zeit als Einbildkraft des Dichters (1939),
Basic Concepts of Poetics (1946),
The Art of Interpretation (1955) and in his three-volume
Goethe Studies (1952–1959). Staiger died on 28 April 1987 in
Horgen, Switzerland.
Critical style Staiger's style of literary criticism was opposed to extra-literary concepts such as
positivism and
intellectual history,
sociology or
psychoanalysis. For Staiger, concentration on the literary texts themselves was most important. He wrote that “the poet's word, the word for its own sake, is valid, nothing behind it, about or below it". This sensitive interpretation method, often described with the saying “understand what grabs us”, developed into a distinct Germanic style of studying literature. His work,
The Art of Interpretation describes his method of literary criticism. He wrote a column for the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a Swiss German-language newspaper. == Prizes ==