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. |
Inni boken
Resultat 1-3 av 37
... able to anticipate that he will lose . The rea- son he does not realize this is his excessive pride , which is reinforced by the structures of Klugheit . Nor , despite popular misconceptions to the contrary , will Mephistopheles be able ...
... able to make sense of what is happening out of the fragments available to him . Certainly there is mate- rial in the archive that could fill in background details . Had Faust remem- bered Dante and Vergil , as Tasso obviously did , he ...
... able to understand the created universe.23 The theatre could be complete because knowledge was , apparently , finite . But that requires the perspective of an omniscient being whose privileged vantage point had become unavail- able by ...
Innhold
The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
Opphavsrett | |
5 andre deler vises ikke