Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics

Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics

Author: Astrida Orle Tantillo

Publisher: Camden House

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781571132123

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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.


Goethe's Elective Affinities

Goethe's Elective Affinities

Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2016-07-23

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9781332812882

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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."


The Will To Create

The Will To Create

Author: Astrida Orle Tantillo

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2012-01-11

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0822970643

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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 GoetheÆs 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 GoetheÆs 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.


Elective Affinities

Elective Affinities

Author: Lydia Goehr

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 9780231144803

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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.


Goethe: Life as a Work of Art

Goethe: Life as a Work of Art

Author: Rüdiger Safranski

Publisher: Liveright Publishing

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 0871404915

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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and Kirkus Reviews 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.


Goethe

Goethe

Author: Ronald D. Gray

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1967-06

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780521094047

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


George Eliot and Goethe

George Eliot and Goethe

Author: Gerlinde Röder-Bolton

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9789042003590

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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


Magritte and Literature

Magritte and Literature

Author: Ben Stoltzfus

Publisher: Leuven University Press

Published: 2014-01-13

Total Pages: 1

ISBN-13: 9058679608

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The Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (1898–1967) is well known for his thought-provoking and witty images that challenge the observer’s preconditioned perceptions of reality. Magritte and Literature examines some of the artist's major paintings whose titles were influenced by and related to works of literature. Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, Goethe's Elective Affinities, and Poe's The Domain of Arnheimare representative examples of Magritte's interarts dialog with literary figures. Despite these convergences the titles subvert the images in his paintings. It is the two images together, the image in the painting and the image in the title, that expresses the aesthetics of Surrealism -- sparked by the juxtaposition of unrelated objects. Magritte's challenge to representation compares with metafiction's challenge to classic realism, Les Chants de Maldoror for example, and the intersecting space between art and writing, sometimes referred to as the iconotext, manifests itself whenever Magritte borrows a literary title for a painting. His strategy is to paint visible thought, and this reverse ekphrasis, the opposite of a rhetorical description of a painting, undermines the written text. When he succeeds, the effect is poetry.