Goethe and Patriarchy

Goethe and Patriarchy PDF Author: James Simpson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351199218
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
"This book traces the history of a complex sexual fantasy which features recurrently in Goethe's writings from his days as a student in Leipzig to the final years as Europe's most celebrated living poet. Simpson shows how the young man's fantasy of innocent sexuality became an increasingly troubled one during the poet's first decade in Weimar. Goethe began to recognize in it a submerged element: the incestuous roots of desire. Triggered by this discovery, Goethe's imagination becomes increasingly analytic and diagnostic, and startlingly prefigures the work of Freud. Yet, paradoxically, Goethe's insight leads him to a triumphant reassertion of an innocent sexuality purged of those elements he identifies as 'diseased'. Central to ""Goethe and Patriarchy"" is a new account of the genesis of the first part of ""Faust"", which is shown to contain a record of Goethe's changing attitudes to human sexuality. In particular, Simpson is the first critic to demonstrate that the Gretchen episode is a deliberate ""Kontrafaktur"" of the patriarchal idyll of the ""Song of Songs"". The book explores numerous other Goethe texts and casts entirely new light on his creative imagination."

Goethe and Patriarchy

Goethe and Patriarchy PDF Author: James Simpson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351199218
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
"This book traces the history of a complex sexual fantasy which features recurrently in Goethe's writings from his days as a student in Leipzig to the final years as Europe's most celebrated living poet. Simpson shows how the young man's fantasy of innocent sexuality became an increasingly troubled one during the poet's first decade in Weimar. Goethe began to recognize in it a submerged element: the incestuous roots of desire. Triggered by this discovery, Goethe's imagination becomes increasingly analytic and diagnostic, and startlingly prefigures the work of Freud. Yet, paradoxically, Goethe's insight leads him to a triumphant reassertion of an innocent sexuality purged of those elements he identifies as 'diseased'. Central to ""Goethe and Patriarchy"" is a new account of the genesis of the first part of ""Faust"", which is shown to contain a record of Goethe's changing attitudes to human sexuality. In particular, Simpson is the first critic to demonstrate that the Gretchen episode is a deliberate ""Kontrafaktur"" of the patriarchal idyll of the ""Song of Songs"". The book explores numerous other Goethe texts and casts entirely new light on his creative imagination."

The Cambridge Companion to Goethe

The Cambridge Companion to Goethe PDF Author: Lesley Sharpe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521665605
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Goethe provides a stimulating and accessible survey of this many-sided figure. The volume places Goethe in the context of the Germany and Europe of his lifetime. His literary work is covered in individual chapters on poetry, drama (with a separate chapter on Faust), prose fiction and autobiography. A wide-ranging survey of reception inside and outside Germany and an extensive guide to further reading round off this volume, which will appeal to students and specialists alike.

Thinking the Unconscious

Thinking the Unconscious PDF Author: Angus Nicholls
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139489674
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Since Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theorization around the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of the unconscious has exerted an enormous influence upon psychoanalysis and psychology, and literary, critical and social theory. Yet, prior to Freud, the concept of the unconscious already possessed a complex genealogy in nineteenth-century German philosophy and literature, beginning with the aftermath of Kant's critical philosophy and the origins of German idealism, and extending into the discourses of romanticism and beyond. Despite the many key thinkers who contributed to the Germanic discourses on the unconscious, the English-speaking world remains comparatively unaware of this heritage and its influence upon the origins of psychoanalysis. Bringing together a collection of experts in the fields of German Studies, Continental Philosophy, the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Psychoanalysis, this volume examines the various theorizations, representations, and transformations undergone by the concept of the unconscious in nineteenth-century German thought.

Goethe's Families of the Heart

Goethe's Families of the Heart PDF Author: Susan E. Gustafson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501315773
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Throughout his literary work Goethe portrays characters who defy and reject 18th and 19th century ideals of aristocratic and civil families, notions of heritage, assumptions about biological connections, expectations about heterosexuality, and legal mandates concerning marriage. The questions Goethe's plays and novels pose are often modern and challenging: Do social conventions, family expectations, and legal mandates matter? Can two men or two women pair together and be parents? How many partners or parents should there be? Two? One? A group? Can parents love children not biologically related to them? Do biological parents always love their children? What is the nature of adoptive parents, children, and families? Ultimately, what is the fundamental essence of love and family? Gustafson demonstrates that Goethe's conception of the elective affinities is certainly not limited to heterosexual spouses or occasionally to men desiring men. A close analysis of Goethe's explication of affinities throughout his literary production reveals his rejection of loveless relationships (for example, arranged marriages) and his acceptance and promotion of all relationships formed through spontaneous affinities and love (including heterosexual, same-sex, nonexclusive, group, parental, and adoptive).

Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850

Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 PDF Author: Christopher John Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135455791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1303

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Book Description
In 850 analytical articles, this two-volume set explores the developments that influenced the profound changes in thought and sensibility during the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. The Encyclopedia provides readers with a clear, detailed, and accurate reference source on the literature, thought, music, and art of the period, demonstrating the rich interplay of international influences and cross-currents at work; and to explore the many issues raised by the very concepts of Romantic and Romanticism.

Volume 16, Tome II: Kierkegaard's Literary Figures and Motifs

Volume 16, Tome II: Kierkegaard's Literary Figures and Motifs PDF Author: Katalin Nun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351874845
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
While Kierkegaard is perhaps known best as a religious thinker and philosopher, there is an unmistakable literary element in his writings. He often explains complex concepts and ideas by using literary figures and motifs that he could assume his readers would have some familiarity with. This dimension of his thought has served to make his writings far more popular than those of other philosophers and theologians, but at the same time it has made their interpretation more complex. Kierkegaard readers are generally aware of his interest in figures such as Faust or the Wandering Jew, but they rarely have a full appreciation of the vast extent of his use of characters from different literary periods and traditions. The present volume is dedicated to the treatment of the variety of literary figures and motifs used by Kierkegaard. The volume is arranged alphabetically by name, with Tome II covering figures and motifs from Gulliver to Zerlina.

Authority and Transgression in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

Authority and Transgression in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre PDF Author: John Thomas Blair
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description


Volume 16, Tome I: Kierkegaard's Literary Figures and Motifs

Volume 16, Tome I: Kierkegaard's Literary Figures and Motifs PDF Author: Katalin Nun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135187487X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
While Kierkegaard is perhaps known best as a religious thinker and philosopher, there is an unmistakable literary element in his writings. He often explains complex concepts and ideas by using literary figures and motifs that he could assume his readers would have some familiarity with. This dimension of his thought has served to make his writings far more popular than those of other philosophers and theologians, but at the same time it has made their interpretation more complex. Kierkegaard readers are generally aware of his interest in figures such as Faust or the Wandering Jew, but they rarely have a full appreciation of the vast extent of his use of characters from different literary periods and traditions. The present volume is dedicated to the treatment of the variety of literary figures and motifs used by Kierkegaard. The volume is arranged alphabetically by name, with Tome I covering figures and motifs from Agamemnon to Guadalquivir.

Culture and Identity

Culture and Identity PDF Author: Maike Oergel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110199971
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary study examines the impact of the emerging awareness of historicity on the concepts of modernity, identity, and culture as they developed in German thought around 1800. It shows how this awareness determined the German notion of the priority of cultural identity. Key texts from Sturm und Drang, Weimar Classicism, German Romanticism and German Idealism, including Goethe’s Faust I and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, are contextualised in relation to post-Enlightenment debates on historicity and modernity. The study traces the modification of the Enlightenment concepts of perfectibility and universal ideals to accommodate the new notion of temporal particularity and impermanence. This is achieved by embedding these once static concepts in a historical process that is powered by a self-prompting internal dialectic. Through synthetic absorption within the historical succession the dialectical process allows for the continuity of values, while leaving room for discontinuity and difference by relying on oppositional successions. The study reveals close connections between the intellectual concerns, the literary ambitions, and the endeavours to construct a modern German identity during this period, which suggests a far greater intellectual coherence of the Goethezeit regarding intellectual challenges and objectives than has been previously assumed.

Goethe's Faust and European Epic

Goethe's Faust and European Epic PDF Author: Arnd Bohm
Publisher: Camden House (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A reassessment of genre that fills a major gap in Goethe's oeuvre and initiates a radically new reading of Faust. Goethe has long been enshrined as the greatest German poet, but his admirers have always been uneasy with the idea that he did not produce a great epic poem. A master in all the other genres and modes, it has been felt, should have done so. Arnd Bohm proposes that Goethe did compose an epic poem, which has been hidden in plain view: Faust. Goethe saw that the Faust legends provided the stuff for a national epic: a German hero, a villain (Mephistopheles), a quest (to know all things), a sublime conflict (good versus evil), a love story (via Helen of Troy), and elasticity (all human knowledge could be accommodated by the plot). Bohm reveals the care with which Goethe draws upon such sources as Tasso, Ariosto, Dante, and Vergil. In the microcosm of the "Auerbachs Keller" episode Faust has the opportunity to find "what holds the world together in its essence" and to end his quest happily, but he fails. He forgets the future because he cannot remember what epic teaches. His course ends tragically, bringing him back to the origin of epic, as he replicates the Trojans' mistake of presuming to cheat the gods. Arnd Bohm isAssociate Professor of English at Carleton University, Ottawa.