Goethe's Faust and European Epic: Forgetting the FutureCamden House, 2007 - 276 sider 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. |
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... Divine Comedy the roles are played by the Pilgrim , Vergil the Guide , and Beatrice . In Paradise Lost , they are ... divine is known only through mediating pres- ences . The exception is Mephistopheles , modeled on Odysseus and on ...
... Divine Comedy , Goethe had turned fifty and come to that awareness now called " mid - life crisis . " Unmistakable are the familiar themes of melancholy and the desultory casting about for a purpose in life that beset Goethe and that ...
... divine embrace at the end of time ) and the possible salvation of Satan . 16 These weighty matters would have been in Goethe's mind from when he began to work on Faust until the very end ; they were brought to his attention early ...
Innhold
The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
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