Eldridge, Sarah Vandegrift ; Horst, Eleanor Ter ; O'Neil, Joseph D.
Synopsis "Goethe Yearbook 31"
This year's volume features a special forum on imperialism and race as well as articles and book reviews concerning Goethe and other writers of his age. This year's volume features a special forum section that stems from the discussions of the Goethe Society's virtual reading group on "Race and Imperialism in 18th-and 19th-Century Literature and Philosophy." Individual members of the reading group contribute essays that combine scholarship with personal reflections on their engagement with issues of race and imperialism over the course of their academic careers. The volume also presents several more traditionally scholarly articles that offer new approaches to and interpretations of texts by Goethe and other writers and thinkers of the period. Elizabeth Powers reads Goethe's methods of reworking text and life in autobiography, drama, and poetry. Alberto Merzari examines Goethe's and Hegel's differing engagements with the Persian poet Ǧalāl al-Dīn Rūmī as a way of exploring the differences in their philosophical thought. Malte Meyer takes up Jochen Berg's drama Im Taurerland as a rewriting of Goethe that engages with questions of cultural imperialism, female agency, and sexuality. And Brian Tucker reads the acoustic dimensions of Eichendorff's poetry to develop a more complex understanding of the poet's relationship to Romanticism. These articles highlight the breadth of scholarship on the Age of Goethe and how differing approaches-detailed close readings, comparative studies, and more-explore its continued relevance. The volume concludes with book reviews reflecting the diversity of recent scholarship in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German studies. Edited by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and Eleanor Ter Horst. Contributors: Frederick Amrine, Claire Baldwin, Matthew Childs, Sally Hatch Gray, Joseph A. Haydt, Peter Höyng, Steven R. Huff, Waltraud Maierhofer, Catriona MacLeod, Alberto Merzari, Jennifer Mensch, Malte Meyer, Carl Niekerk, Michael Olson, Saurabh Pal, Elizabeth Powers, Daniel Purdy, Michael Saman, Patricia Anne Simpson, Margaret Strair, Michael Swellander, Brian Tucker, Christian P. Weber, David E. Wellbery.
