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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... authority literally as political subjects of the Church , inhabi- tants of papal domains.15 The flies in Tasso's ointment were that unity under the sole authority of the Pope was not an agenda appealing to Protestants , and that the ...
... authority by submitting to the authority of Mephistopheles . He will become their " high priest , " the one whose deceptions replicate the abuses of power Luther had condemned when attacking the corrupt Papacy . Shortly after he arrives ...
... authority of the text : " If he , O wounded spirit , had been able to believe before , ' replied my sage , ' what he had never seen save in my verses , he would not have stretched forth his hand against you ; but the incredible thing ...
Innhold
The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
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