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."
Translated by Ellen von Nardroff and Ernest H. von Nardroff The reflections on art and literature that Goethe produced throughout his life are the premise and corollary of his work as poet, novelist, and man of science. This volume contains such important essays as "On Gothic Architecture," "On the Laocoon Group," and "Shakespeare: A Tribute." Several works in this collection appear for the first time unabridged and in fresh translations.
Exceptionally fine poetry by Germany's greatest literary figure, from his earliest, "An den Schlaf" ("To Sleep"), written when he was 18, to his last great poem, "Verdächtnis" ("Legacy"), written when he was 80.
Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Voltaire, Goethe, Schlegel and Coleridge to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.
From Goethe to Gundolf: Essays on German Literature and Culture is a collection of Roger Paulin’s groundbreaking essays, spanning the last forty years. The work represents his major research interests of Romanticism and the reception of Shakespeare in Germany, but also explores a broader range of themes, from poetry and the public memorialization of poets to fairy stories - all meticulously researched, yet highly accessible. As a comprehensive examination of German literary history in the period 1700-1900, the collection not only includes accounts of the lives and work of Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, and Gundolf (amongst others), serving to nuance our understanding of these figures in history, but also considers diverse (and often underexplored) topics, from academic freedom to the rise of travel literature. The essays have been reformulated, corrected, and updated to add references to recent works. However, the core foundations of the originals remain, and just as when they were first published, the value of these essays – to researchers, students, and all those who are interested in German literary history – cannot be overstated.
The author of Faust, the best-selling sentimental novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, of exquisite lyric poetry (set to music by Schubert and Mozart), and of a bewildering variety of other plays, novels, poems, and treatises, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also excelled as an administrator in thecabinet of Carl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. Considered by Nietzsche to have been 'not just a good and great man, but an entire culture', Goethe was as vital a part of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German social and political life, as he was its cultural nucleus. However, as this perceptive biography shows, the originality ofhis art lay in his complex distance from his times.