Goethe's Literary Essays

Goethe's Literary Essays
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2020-09-14
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3849658716

Professor Spingarn has done students of literature a real favor; for he has gathered into a single and well-made volume, golden pages from one of the great masters of literature. As divergent-minded judges as Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve acclaimed Goethe the supreme literary critic of all time and, whatever might be said against so superlative an opinion, certainly Goethe's many-sidedness, his undoubted genius, and his keen insight all conspired to give his judgments on literature a value too great to be ignored. All phases of his critical activity are represented in this excellent volume, which is the work of several translators, all of high standard. Goethe was keenly interested in French and in English literature, no less than in German, and for the English reader there will be much to stimulate thought in his sympathetic appreciation of Shakespeare. Those of us who have found the great dramatist's plays strangely failing in power to lift us out of ou selves, can find much to ponder over in Goethe's declaration: "Shakespeare gets his effect by means of the living word, and it is for this reason that one should hear him read, for then the attention is not distracted either by a too adequate or too in adequate stage-setting. There is no higher . . . pleasure than to sit with closed eyes and hear a naturally expressive voice recite, not declaim, a play of Shakespeare's." Goethe was no hard and fast critic, and as he re-read a book and found that it appealed to him in a new light, he did not hesitate to revise his earlier opinions and even to call attention to corrected impressions or reversals of judgments. It was because of his open-mindedness to new impressions that his critical dicta appear perennially fresh and stimulate the reader by their frankness and their vitality. The task of collecting these admirable and valuable essays required a scholar. It found one in Professor Spingarn, to whom the lovers of the best in literature owe genuine gratitude for this volume. The essays are grouped under The theory of art — The theory of literature — On Shakespeare — On other writers — Extracts from the conversations with Eckermann.

Essays on Art and Literature

Essays on Art and Literature
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1994-07-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780691036571

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."

From Goethe to Gundolf

From Goethe to Gundolf
Author: Roger Paulin
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1800642156

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.

Literature and the Cult of Personality

Literature and the Cult of Personality
Author: Gregory Maertz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2017-04-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3838269810

The construction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an Anglo-American sage and literary icon was the product of a cult of personality that lay at the center of nineteenth-century cultural politics. A reconstruction of the culture wars fought over Goethe’s authority, a previously hidden chapter in the intellectual history of the period ranging from the late eighteenth century to the threshold of Modernism, is the focus of Literature and the Cult of Personality. Marginal as well as canonical writers and critics figured prominently in this process, and Literature and the Cult of Personality offers insight into the mediation activities of Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry Crabb Robinson, the canonical Romantic poets, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret Fuller, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and others. For women writers and Jacobins, Scots, and Americans, translating Goethe served as an empowering cultural platform that challenges the myth of the self-sufficiency of British literature. Reviewing and translating German authors provided a means of gaining literary enfranchisement and offered a paradigm of literary development according to which 're-writers' become original writers through an apprenticeship of translation and reviewing. In the diverse and fascinating body of critical writing examined in this book, textual exegesis plays an unexpectedly minor role; in its place, a full-blown cult of personality emerges along with a blueprint for the ideology of hero-worship that is more fully mapped out in the cultural and political life of twentieth-century Europe.

West-Eastern Divan

West-Eastern Divan
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: Gingko Library
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1909942413

In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic traditions, and was immediately inspired to create his own West-Eastern Divan as a lyrical conversation between the poetry and history of his native Germany and that of Persia. The resulting collection engages with the idea of the other and unearths lyrical connections between cultures. The West-Eastern Divan is one of the world’s great works of literature, an inspired masterpiece, and a poetic linking of European and Persian traditions. This new bilingual edition expertly presents the wit, intelligence, humor, and technical mastery of the poetry in Goethe’s Divan. In order to preserve the work’s original power, Eric Ormsby has created this translation in clear contemporary prose rather than in rhymed verse, which tends to obscure the works sharpness. This edition is also accompanied by explanatory notes of the verse in German and in English and a translation of Goethe’s own commentary, the “Notes and Essays for a Better Understanding of the West-Eastern Divan.” This edition not only bring this classic collection to English-language readers, but also, at a time of renewed Western unease about the other, to open up the rich cultural world of Islam.

The Essential Goethe

The Essential Goethe
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 1051
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691181047

First published by Wordsworth Editions 1999 and 2007. First published by Princeton University Press in 2016.

Maxims and Reflections

Maxims and Reflections
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2005-12-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 0141939184

Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.

Faust

Faust
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 890
Release: 1887
Genre:
ISBN: