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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... mind , which dried the blood and heated the mind . The illness was particularly harmful to the mnemonic capacity , since obsessive attention upon a singular fixed idea or image made it difficult to move to other places in the memory ...
... mind of Ariosto , who was both aware of and in sympathy with a critical sci- entific attitude . The narrator of ... minds . What moves into the foreground in Orlando Furioso is precisely , for the first time , the need for the epic poet ...
... mind , in com- bination with their cold and dry physical constitution , constantly threat- ens to " accelerate and hasten " their “ ruine and decay . " 16 One can hardly imagine a better synopsis of Faust's words and deeds in the ...
Innhold
The System of European Epic | 20 |
Faust and Epic History | 36 |
The Roots of Evil | 87 |
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