Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology: Man And Other Plants (Oxford Modern Languages And Literature Monographs)

Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology: Man and Other Plants (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)

For many readers in the English-speaking world, Goethe has somehow remained separate from the European intellectual and literary tradition. In this unique and wide-ranging study, Matthew Bell aims to correct this view by showing how Goethe portrayed human beings as part of a natural continuum, very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Bell's fresh readings of Goethe's major and lesser-known texts are set against the background of the science and philosophy of the age, and the writer's debts to other thinkers are analyzed. Placing Goethe in an anthropological context, Goethe and Naturalistic Anthropology demonstrates that eighteenth-century anthropological thought provides an essential, hitherto overlooked context for the understanding of Goethe's literary enterprise from Werther to Die Wahllverwandtschaften.Review"A provocative study...valuable for its insights into often overlooked intellectual influences...that made the 'Enlightenment' a far more complex period that is hinted in most literary and cultural histories."--Choice"We are indebted to Bell for offering this original reading, which not only challenges other interpretations of Goethe, but helps characterize his intellectual universe, both before and after the 1800 divide."--Studies in RomanticismFrom the Back CoverFor many readers in the English-speaking world, Goethe is somehow separate from the European intellectual and literary tradition. In this unique and wide-ranging study, Matthew Bell aims to correct this view by showing how Goethe portrayed human beings as part of a natural continuum, very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Dr Bell's fresh readings of Goethe's major and lesser-known texts are set against the background of the science and philosophy of the age, and the writer's debts to other thinkers are analysed. The development of Goethe as a writer and thinker is traced from his sentimental epistolary novel Werther - read in the context of the rise of psychological theory in the Enlightenment - to the emergence of his own theory of 'empirical psychology' in the great roman a clef of 1809, Die Wahlverwandtschaften. In a major new interpretation of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Matthew Bell follows the ideal of organic growth from the novel's origins in Enlightenment optimism to its revision in an atmosphere of post-revolutionary scepticism. Placing Goethe in an anthropological context, Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology demonstrates that eighteenth-century anthropological thought provides an essential, hitherto overlooked context for the understanding of Goethe's literary enterprise from Werther to Die Wahlverwandtschaften.About the AuthorMatthew Bell is a Lecturer in German at King's College, London.