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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... blood is drawn not from the wood . Get away from this cruel land , from these hard - fisted shores ! I am Polydorus . The spears that nailed me down here have sprouted An iron crop above me , a thicket of javelin wood . Then an acute ...
... blood , blood , blood and the talk of drinking " Tyrannenblut " starts to sound weird enough to bring to mind the “ can- nibalism " of the four in " Auerbachs Keller . " 48 I was led to this passage by Leonard Willoughby's " Wine that ...
... blood come from ? The material economy of the alchemical system was , by definition , closed : matter could be neither cre- ated nor destroyed . Not even , or rather especially not , Mephistopheles is permitted to violate the laws of ...
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The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
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