Enlightenment Thought in the Writings of Goethe: A Contribution to the History of Ideas

by Paul E. Kerry

Overview

Shows Goethe, the most famous of German writers, as a child of the Enlightenment.

Throughout his oeuvre Goethe invokes the writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment: Voltaire and Goldsmith, Sterne and Bayle, Beccaria and Franklin. And he does not merely reference them: their ideas make up the salt of his most acclaimed works. Like Hume before him, Goethe takes up the topic of suicide, but in a best-selling novel, Werther; the beating heart of Faust I is the fate of a woman who commits infanticide, a burning social issue ofhis age; in an article for a popular journal Goethe takes up the cause of Kant and Penn, who wrote treatises on how to establish peace in Europe. In another essay Goethe calls for reconciliation between Germans who had fought against each other in those same Wars, as well as for worldwide understanding between Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Heathens. Professor Kerry shows that Goethe is a child of the Enlightenment and an innovator of its legacy. To do sohe discusses a chronological swath of Goethe's works, both popular and neglected, and shows how each of them engages Enlightenment concerns.

Paul Kerry is Professor of History at Brigham Young University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571134073
Publisher:	BOYDELL & BREWER INC
Publication date:	05/01/2009
Series:	Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture , #35
Pages:	255
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgements	ix
	Citations of Editions of Goethe's Works, Letters, Diaries, and Conversations	xi
	Introduction	1
1	The Emergence of Enlightenment Concerns	27
2	Adoption, Adaptation, and Assimilation in Iphigenie auf Tauris	42
3	An Enlightenment Coign of Vantage: The Intersection of History, Literature, and Belief in Egmont	53
4	Healing the Wounds of War: The Sankt-Rochus-Fest zu Bingen	76
5	Goethe's Morgenblatt Essay on Die Geheimnisse	90
6	Goethe's Weltfest	101
7	The Foreign and the Familiar in the West-ostlicher Divan	109
8	Besserem Verstandniss	132
9	Religious Freedom in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre	156
10	Excursus: "In this sense...we do not tolerate Jews among us"	177
11	Eigenheiten and Weltverkehr	193
	Conclusion	203
	Works Consulted	207
	Index	229

Editorial Reviews

In his forthright and clearly-written book, Kerry proves that he is a determined proponent of the argument that the great German writer felt a significant obligation to the Enlightenment, and that 'the Enlightenment engages Goethe for most of his life.

DAS ACHTZEHNTE JAHRHUNDERT

Kerry's analyses demonstrate a profound mastery of the sources, of both Goethe's works and the secondary literature, with a pronounced preference for 'little-known pieces'.

MONATSHEFTE (trans. from German)

[A]n informative, well-researched, and useful book. By illuminating how Goethe's writings raise intellectual-cultural awareness, Kerry's study bears implications for recent studies of intercultural competence and transcultural literary interpretation. In sum, Kerry's insights into Goethe's writings and the process of enlightenment warrant sustained consideration.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: A CURRENT BIBLIOGRAPHY

In choosing the texts that he does, and providing a very clever glimpse of the background within which those texts were generated, Kerry's book is worth the read, not just for Goethe enthusiasts, or Enlightenment scholars, but also for those seriously considering tolerance in our own age.

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY

An ambitious attempt to codify the use of Enlightenment philosophy in the writing of Goethe.

BOOK NEWS

Clear, informative, and interesting. It is general enough to serve a less specialized readership, but it also brings to light aspects of Goethe's work that might otherwise be ignored.

SEMINAR

[A]n informative, well-researched, and useful book. By illuminating how Goethe's writings raise intellectual-cultural awareness, Kerry's study bears implications for recent studies of intercultural competence and transcultural literary interpretation. In sum, Kerry's insights into Goethe's writings and the process of enlightenment warrant sustained consideration. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: A CURRENT BIBLIOGRAPHY

An ambitious attempt to codify the use of Enlightenment philosophy in the writing of Goethe. BOOK NEWS

Kerry's analyses demonstrate a profound mastery of the sources, of both Goethe's works and the secondary literature, with a pronounced preference for "little-known pieces". MONATSHEFTE (trans. from German)

Clear, informative, and interesting. It is general enough to serve a less specialized readership, but it also brings to light aspects of Goethe's work that might otherwise be ignored. SEMINAR

In choosing the texts that he does, and providing a very clever glimpse of the background within which those texts were generated, Kerry's book is worth the read, not just for Goethe enthusiasts, or Enlightenment scholars, but also for those seriously considering tolerance in our own age. JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY

In his forthright and clearly-written book, Kerry proves that he is a determined proponent of the argument that the great German writer felt a significant obligation to the Enlightenment, and that "the Enlightenment engages Goethe for most of his life.." DAS ACHTZEHNTE JAHRHUNDERT

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