Goethes Elective Affinities And The Critics

The first book-length examination in English of the critical reception of Goethe's daring novel The Elective Affinities. From the time of its publication to today, Goethe's famous novel The Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809), has aroused a storm of critical confusion. Critics in every age have vehemently disagreed about its content (whether it defends the institution of marriage, radically supports its dissolution, or even whether it is about marriage at all), its style (whether it is romantic, realistic, modern, or postmodern) and its tone (whether it is tragic, anti-romantic, or ironic). The present study begins by focusing upon the reaction of Goethe's contemporaries, and then discusses Goethe's own efforts -- in light of the initial negative critical reaction -- toshape the novel's reception. It continues by viewing the novel through the lens of 19th-century Hegelianism, positivism, and biographical studies, and by exploring the relationship between the novel's 19th-century reception and the growth of psychoanalytic theory and German nationalism. Moving on to the 20th century, the book considers the re-evaluation of Goethe's scientific works, the impact of World War II on the novel's interpreters, and the growing influence of literary theory. Here particular emphasis is placed upon Walter Benjamin's seminal essay on the novel and upon the criticism that the essay has inspired. Astrida Orle Tantillo is assistant professor of German at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Excerpt from Goethe's Elective Affinities: With an Introduction AT the request of Mr. D. W. Niles, publisher, Boston, I have re-read, having read with pleasure and profit. In my early life, the Elective A inities of Goethe, an English translation of which Mr. Niles proposes to publish for the use of the American public; and he does me the honor to think that my views of the value of _the, book may contribute some what to its success among us at this time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

As illustrated in Goethe's famous novel of the same name, elective affinities are powerful relationships that crystallize under changing conditions. In this new book, Lydia Goehr focuses on the history of elective affinities between philosophy and music from German classicism, romanticism, and idealism to the modernist aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno and Arthur C. Danto. Aesthetic theory, she argues, depends on a dynamic philosophy of history centered on tendencies, yearnings, needs, and potentialities. With this in mind, she recasts the theses of Adorno and Danto regarding the death or end of philosophy, art, music, and human experience as arguments for continuation and survival. Elective Affinities tracks the migration of aesthetic and critical theory from Germany to the United States following the catastrophic period of the twentieth century marked by the Second World War.

Better known as a poet and dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was also a learned philosopher and natural scientist. Astrida Orle Tantillo offers the first comprehensive analysis of his natural philosophy, which she contends is rooted in creativity. Tantillo analyzes Goethe's main scientific texts, including his work on physics, botany, comparative anatomy, and metereology. She critically examines his attempts to challenge the basic tenets of Newtonian and Cartesian science and to found a new natural philosophy. In individual chapters devoted to different key principles, she reveals how this natural philosophy--which questions rationalism, the quantitative approach to scientific inquiry, strict gender categories, and the possibility of scientific objectivity--illuminates Goethe's standing as both a precursor and critic of modernity. Tantillo does not presuppose prior knowledge of Goethe or science, and carefully avoids an overreliance on specialized jargon. This makes The Will to Create accessible to a wide audience, including philosophers, historians of science, and literary theorists, as well as general readers.

This “splendid biography” (Wall Street Journal) of Goethe presents his life and work as an essential touchstone for the modern age. A masterful intellectual portrait, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is celebrated as the seminal twenty-first-century biography of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and—as Rüdiger Safranksi emphasizes—a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying exclusively on primary sources, including his correspondence with contemporaries, to produce a “fresh and authentic” (Economist) portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Skillfully blending “artistic analysis with swift, sharp renderings” of the great political and intellectual figures Goethe encountered, “[Safranski’s] portrait of the prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy” of a monumental legacy (The New Yorker). As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.

A concise survey and criticism of Goethe's work, for the general reader and the student.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction /Catriona MacLeod -- Summaries -- Consulting the Manual: Word and Image in Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés /Michael R. Taylor -- Living and Dying in the Limelight: Performing the Self in Frida Kahlo's Diary and Paintings /Adriana Dragomir -- Imbrication de l'image, du texte et de la musique dans un corpus de prières énigmatiques à la Vierge /Laurence Wuidar -- The Künstlerroman as Romantic Arabesque: Parody, Collaboration, and the Making of The Modern Vasari (1854) /Cordula Grewe -- The “Inscapes” of Louis le Brocquy /Karen E. Brown -- American Scenery/Canadian Scenery: Conflicting Views of Indigenes in Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Portrayals of the American Continent /Robert Grant -- Cartoonists as Matchmakers: The Vibrant Relationship of Text and Image in the Work of Lynda Barry /Miriam Harris -- The Truth of the Word, the Falsity of the Image: Transmetropolitan's Critique of the Society of the Spectacle /Steen Christiansen -- Le magazine français Vu (1928-40): Naissance de l'information visuelle et utopie de la substitution de l'image photographique au texte écrit /Danielle Leenaerts -- From Ekphrasis to History: Verbal Transformations of the Display of Picture Galleries--Wilhelm Heinse and Friedrich Schlegel /Hubert Locher -- Modernizing History and Historicizing Modernity: Baudelaire and Baudelairean Representations of Contemporaneity /Lauren S. Weingarden -- Serial Künstler: Portrait of the Artist as a Malefactor /Valentin Nussbaum -- Hypnotic Performance and the Falsity of Appearances: The Aesthetics of Medical Spectatorship and Axel Munthe's Critique of Jean-Martin Charcot /Jonathan Marshall -- New Light and Old Shadows: Industrial Illumination and its Imaginaire /Susana Oliveira -- Illustrating the Shadow of Doubt: Henry James, Blindness, and “The Real Thing” /Jennifer A. Greenhill -- Picturing Paradise: Baudelaire's “L'Invitation au voyage” /Eric T. Haskell -- The Writing-Drawing Continuum of Alexei Remizov /Julia Friedman -- Aby Warburg as Reader of Gottfried Semper: Reflections on the Cosmic Character of Ornament /Spyros Papapetros -- John Heartfield's Insects and the “Idea” of Natural History /Cristina Cuevas-Wolf -- The Photographic Thought of Latina/o Literature and Cultural Critique /María DeGuzmán -- Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein, Fassbinder: Découpage Aesthetics on the Divide /Susan Nurmi-Schomers -- (Ideo-)Logical Alliances between Image and Script: Calligraphic Reconfigurations in Contemporary Chinese Art /Birgit Mersmann -- Contributors -- Index.

In the first half of the 19th century in England there was a strong interest in German literature and scholarship. This study explores the impact of the work of Goethe on George Eliot, whose "elective affinity" with Goethe was both ethical and artistic, and analyzes Eliot's responsiveness to Goethe's moral vision and the literary uses she makes of her familiarity with his work. Concentrates on The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda, showing their relationship with Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Faust. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Part of an exhaustive series which provides English translations of a representative proportion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's vast body of work, this volume contains such essays as "On Gothic Architecture", "On the Laocoon" and "Shakespeare: a Tribute."