The Specular Moment: Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism. Meridian Crossing Aesthetics.

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Einband leicht berieben, Kopfschnitt minimal angegraut, sonst ein gutes Exemplar / binding slightly rubbed, top edge minimally grayed, otherwise a good copy. - In this book, the author has three aims: ft) to elaborate an interpretation of Goethe�s lyric poetry adequate to the intricacies of its subject matter; (2) to demonstrate the significance of that poetry to the development of European Romanticism; (3) to establish a method of inquiry that weaves together the major strands of theoretical reflection in modern literary studies. No study of Goethe�s early lyric poetry has been published in English in the last fifty years. But the reading of this poetry the author presents is not intended merely to introduce an English readership to a major body of work; rather, the book delineates for the first time in any language an account of the symbolic network or organizing myth that underlies Goethe�s individual poems. This marks a decisive break with the previous research on Goethe, which has tended to view his poetry as the expression of occasional experiences. The author shows, on the contrary, that Goethe�s lyric work circles around a core set of problems and figures, that it evinces a systematic coherence unperceived until now. In the literature on European Romanticism, consideration of the German contribution has typically been restricted to the theoretical work of the Schlegel brothers and Novalis, and philosophers such as Schelling and Hegel. The author contends that the ideas they articulated were first worked through in Goethe�s bold poetic experimentation. Furthermore, The Specular Moment pursues a methodological aim. The author combines the insights of linguistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, social history, and philosophy in powerful and supple analyses. Thus, the book offers a contribution to the contemporary debate on method, a contribution that argues for interdisciplinarity, descriptive precision, controlled conjecture, and, above all, respect for literary complexity and nuance. / Contents Note on Abbreviations PART I: THE SPECULAR MOMENT � 1 Idyllic and Lyric Intimacy � 2 The Crisis of Vision � 3 Transcendental Etudes PART II: THE SEXUALIZATION OF SPECULARITY � 4 The Originary Donation � 5 Genius and the Wounded Subject of Modernity PART III: THE MYTH OF LYRIC VOICE � 6 Primordial Orality � 7 Primordial Song PART IV: POETIC VOCATION � 8 Hermeneutics and the Origin of Humanity � 9 The Sublime. ISBN 0804726949