In The Making of a Terrorist, Jeffrey Champlin examines key figures from three canonical texts from the German-language literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Goethe’s Gotz von Berlichingen, Schiller’s Die Rauber, and Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas. Champlin situates these readings within a larger theoretical and historical context, exploring the mechanics, aesthetics, and poetics of terror while explicating the emergence of the terrorist personality in modernity. In engaging and accessible prose, Champlin explores the ethical dimensions of violence and interrogates an ethics of textual violence.

JEFFREY CHAMPLIN teaches at Bard College, where he is an associate fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center. He is also a visiting assistant professor and chair of the Department of Literature and Society at the Bard Honors College at Al-Quds University.

AVITAL RONELL is University Professor of the Humanities at NYU as well as Jacques Derrida Professor of Philosophy and Media at the European Graduate School in Switzerland.