Introduction : the character and limits of the civilizing process / Mary Fulbrook -- Laughter and the process of civilization in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival / Sebastian Coxon -- (Un-)civilized language : the regulation of cursing and swearing in German through the ages / Geraldine Horan -- Civilization, un-civilization, transgression : on Goethe's Faust / Martin Swales -- The pre-colonial imagination : race and revolution in literature of the Napoleonic period / Susanne Kord -- Violence and civilization : transgression in modern wars / Mark Hewitson -- Civilization in the dining room : table manners in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks / Ernest Schonfield -- The civilizing process and the construction of the bourgeois self : music chambers in Wilhelmine Germany / Maiken Umbach -- Norbert Elias, the confusions of Torless and the ethics of shamelessness / Stephanie Bird -- Bodily issues : the West German anti-authoritarian movement and the semiotics of dirt / Mererid Puw Davies -- Changing states, changing selves : generations in the Third Reich and the GDR / Mary Fulbrook