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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... language in which Tasso couched the allegory was a convenient device for imagining the conflicts between rea- son and irrationality ; it was a commonplace in Scripture and in the teach- ings of the Stoics and meshed well with the ...
... language of com- merce , see Marc Shell , Money , Language and Thought : Literary and Philosophical Economies from the Medieval to the Modern Era ( Berkeley and Los Angeles and London : U of California P , 1982 ) , 24-46 ; Bernard ...
... language . Frosch's language is filled with aggression as he moves to con- front the newcomers : Laẞt mich nur gehn ! Bei einem vollen Glase Zieh ' ich , wie einen Kinderzahn , Den Burschen leicht die Würmer aus der Nase . Sie scheinen ...
Innhold
The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
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