Investigates how culture in the Age of Goethe shaped and was shaped by a sustained and multifaceted debate about the place of religion in politics, philosophy, and culture. The eighteenth century is usually considered to be a time of increasing secularization in which the primacy of theology was replaced by the authority of reason, yet this lofty intellectual endeavor played itself out in a social and political reality that was heavily impacted by religious customs and institutions. This duality is visible in the literature and culture of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany. On the one hand, authors such asGoethe, Schiller, and Kleist are known for their distance from traditional Christianity. On the other hand, many canonical texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries -- from Goethe's Faust to Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans to Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas -- are not only filled with references to the Bible, but invoke religious frameworks. Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe investigates how culture in the Age of Goethe shaped and was shaped by a sustained and multifaceted debate about the place of religion and religious difference in politics, philosophy, and culture, enriching our understanding of the relationship between religion and culture during this foundational period in German history. Contributors: Frederick Amrine, Claire Baldwin, Lisa Beesley, Jane K. Brown, Jeffrey L. High, Elisabeth Krimmer, Helmut J. Schneider, Patricia Anne Simpson, John H. Smith, Tom Spencer. Elisabeth Krimmer is professor of German at the University of California, Davis. Patricia Anne Simpson is professor of German at Montana State University.

Cutting-edge scholarly articles on diverse aspects of Goethe and the Goethezeit, featuring in this volume a special section on environmentalism. The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, encouraging North American Goethe scholarship by publishing original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Volume 22 features a special section on environmentalism, edited by Dalia Nassar and Luke Fischer, with contributions on: the metaphor of music in Goethe's scientific work and its influence on Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Uexküll, and Zuckerkandl (Frederick Amrine); his conceptualization of modern civilization in Faust (Gernot Böhme); a non-anthropocentricvision of nature in his writings on the intermaxillary bone (Ryan Feigenbaum); his geopoetics of granite (Jason Groves); the historical antecedents of biosemiotics in "Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen" (Kate Rigby); and the conceptof the "Dark Pastoral" in Werther (Heather I. Sullivan). In addition, there are articles on Goethe as a spiritual predecessor of phenomenology (Iris Hennigfeld); concepts of the "hermaphrodite" in contributions to theEncyclopédie by Louis de Jaucourt and Albrecht von Haller (Stephanie Hilger); on Goethe's poem "Nähe des Geliebten" (David Hill); on the link between commerce and culture in West-östlicher Divan (Daniel Purdy); on Goethe's thoughts on collecting and museums (Helmut Schneider); and on intrigues in the works of J. M. R. Lenz (Inge Stephan). Contributors: Frederick Amrine, Gernot Böhme, Ryan Feigenbaum, Luke Fischer, Jason Groves, Iris Hennigfeld, Stephanie M. Hilger, David Hill, Dalia Nassar, Daniel Purdy, Kate Rigby, Helmut J. Schneider, Inge Stephan, Heather I. Sullivan. Adrian Daub is Associate Professor of German at Stanford. Elisabeth Krimmeris Professor of German at the University of California Davis. Book review editor Birgit Tautz is Associate Professor of German at Bowdoin College.

One of the most prolific and versatile writers of all time, Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) made an impact that continues to extend far beyond his native Germany. The variety of human questions and experiences treated in his works is arguably without parallel. He also had (for his era) an unusually long life, which spanned the French Revolution, the end of the Holy Roman Empire and subsequent reshaping of the German-speaking world, and the rapid onset of industrial modernity. In thirty-seven short essays, leading international scholars explore Goethe's life and times, his literary works, his activity in the realms of art, philosophy and natural science, his reception of – and indeed by – other cultures, and, finally, the resonance of his work in our time. The aim of this collection is to open as many windows as possible onto Goethe's wide-ranging intellectual and practical activity, and to give a sense of his ongoing importance.

Faust Adaptations, edited and introduced by Lorna Fitzsimmons, takes a comparative cultural studies approach to the ubiquitous legend of Faust and his infernal dealings. Including readings of English, German, Dutch, and Egyptian adaptations ranging from the early modern period to the contemporary moment, this collection emphasizes the interdisciplinary and transcultural tenets of comparative cultural studies. Authors variously analyze the Faustian theme in contexts such as subjectivity, genre, politics, and identity. Chapters focus on the work of Christopher Marlowe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Adelbert von Chamisso, Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, D. J. Enright, Konrad Boehmer, Mahmoud Aboudoma, Bridge Markland, Andreas Gössling, and Uschi Flacke. Contributors include Frederick Burwick, Christa Knellwolf King, Ehrhard Bahr, Konrad Boehmer, and David G. John. Faust Adaptations demonstrates the enduring meaningfulness of the Faust concept across borders, genres, languages, nations, cultures, and eras. This collection presents innovative approaches to understanding the mediated, translated, and adapted figure of Faust through both culturally specific inquiry and timeless questions.

Provides a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Jacob reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Jacob demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come. --Adapted from publisher description.

Invoking Goethe's name has become fashionable again. With new methods and technologies of reading threatening to render literature virtual and insubstantial, we have the sense that 'Goethe's ghosts' - the otherwise neglected voices and traditions that, finding their most trenchant expression in Goethe, inform the Western storehouse of literature - can show us long-forgotten dimensions of literature. Inspired by the distinguished Goethe scholar Jane Brown, the contributors to this volume take a rich variety of approaches to Goethe: cultural studies, history of the book, semiotics, deconstruction, colonial studies, feminism, childhood studies, and eco-criticism.

Cutting-edge scholarly articles on diverse aspects of Goethe and the Goethezeit, featuring in this volume a special section on acoustics around 1800. The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, encouraging North American Goethe scholarship by publishing original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Volume 25 features a special section on acoustics around 1800, edited by Mary Helen Dupree, which includes, among others, contributionson sound and listening in Ludwig Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert (Robert Ryder) and on the role of the tympanum in Herder's aesthetic theory (Tyler Whitney). The volume also contains essays on Goethe and stage sequels(Matthew Birkhold), on figures of armament in eighteenth-century German drama (Susanne Fuchs), on the dialectics of Bildung in Wilhelm Meister (Galia Benziman), on the Gothic motif in Goethe's Faust and "Von deutscher Baukunst" (Jessica Resvick), on Goethe and Salomon Maimon (Jason Yonover), on Goethe's "Novelle" (Ehrhard Bahr), and on Schiller's Bürger critique (Hans Richard Brittnacher). Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Galia Benziman, Matthew H. Birkhold, Hans Richard Brittnacher, Linda Dietrick, Mary Helen Dupree, Susanne Fuchs, Deva Kemmis, Jessica C. Resvick, Robert Ryder, Patricia Anne Simpson, Chenxi Tang, Tyler Whitney, Jason Yonover, Chunjie Zhang. Adrian Daub is Associate Professor of German at Stanford University. Elisabeth Krimmer is Professor of German at the University of California Davis.

This classic selection of writings by Goethe reflects the author's philosophy of love and death.

J. G. Herder is enjoying a renaissance in philosophy and across the humanities. This book offers important new insights into the complexity and depth of his thought. This unprecedented collection fills a gap in the secondary literature, highlighting the genuinely innovative and distinctive nature of Herder's philosophy. Not only does Herder offer highly original answers to important philosophical questions, such as the mind-body problem and the role of sensibility in cognition and ethics, he also opens up rich resources for thinking about the very nature of philosophy itself and its connections to other fields in the humanities and social sciences. Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology brings together a set of original essays that centre on the question at the heart of Herder's philosophical thought: How can philosophy enable an understanding of the human being that does not narrowly focus on its rational and moral capacities, but rather understands these in the context of its existence as a creature of nature that is fundamentally marked by a sensuous and affective openness and responsiveness to the world and other persons. The first part of the volume examines the various dimensions of Herder's philosophical understanding of human nature through which he sought methodologically to delineate a genuinely anthropological philosophy. The second part then examines further aspects of this understanding of human nature and what emerges from it: the human-animal distinction; how human life evolves over space and time on the basis of a natural order; the fundamentally hermeneutic dimension to human existence; and the interrelatedness of language, history, religion, and culture.

Through a series of studies by leading scholars in the field, At the Edges of Thought sheds new light on key philosophical encounters with thinkers such as Maimon, Kleist, Hoelderlin, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Feuerbach in Deleuze's texts.