This book reflects the three major emphases of Nicholas Boyle's intellectual life — literature, philosophical theology, and social and cultural criticism — and the distinctive emphasis of his approach to all three.
Introduction Part I: Literature and Criticism 1. The Human Epiphany: Reflections on Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris and Shakespeare's the Winter's Tale 2. Cognitive Mapping: Adam, Venus, and Faust 3. Goethe as Secular Icon 4. A Poem by August Wilhelm Schlegel: Zueignung des Trauerspiels Romeo und Julia' 5. Mignon and the Idea of the Secret 6. Goethe and Mörike: 'Urworte. Orphisch' and 'Besuch in Urach' 7. Short of History': Les Murray and the Communion of Saints 8. Ways of Knowing: Blaise Pascal, Angelus Silesius and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg 9. Enlightened Mythology: Thomas Mann and Myth 10. Goethe's Faust, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and the Site of Literature Part II: Philosophy, Theology and the University 11. Goethe and Machiavelli 12. Just one damned thing after another'? Some Reflections on the Philosophy of History 13. Seven Types of Forgetting 14. Seamus Heaney and Catholicism 15. Christian Humanism and Higher Education 16. Postscript
