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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... epic . Wordsworth completed The Prelude ; 1 Keats began an epic with Hyperion ; 2 and Byron may lay some claim to the tradition with Don Juan.3 On the whole , however , critics have generally been uneasy about the attempts to produce epics ...
... epic in the last decade of the eighteenth century . First , Goethe's return to the larger epic was possible because he had come to understand , and accept , the historicity of epic as a genre . Each epic not only reflected the subject ...
... epic is vast . In addition to specific studies of particular epics , the following provide an overview of the workings of the epic sys- tem ; the list is not intended to be comprehensive : Barbara J. Bono , Literary Transvaluation ...
Innhold
The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
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