David E. Wellbery - Böcker

This study analyses the emergence of aesthetic theory in eighteenth-century Germany in relation to contemporary theories of the nature of language and signs. As well as being extremely relevant to the discussion of literary theory, this perspective casts much light on Enlightenment aesthetics. The central text under consideration shows that the extended comparison of poetry and the plastic arts contained in that major work of aesthetic criticism rests upon a theory of signs and constitutes a complex and global theory of aesthetic signification. His analysis of Laocoon is preceded by chapters which establish the underlying structure and influence of the Enlightenment metasemiotic - that is, the place and function of the sign concept in the culture of the early eighteenth century. As an important reinterpretation of Lessing's Laocoon and of the development of German aesthetic theory, this book will be of special interest to students and scholars of German literature. Moreover, as a significant chapter in the history of semiotics, it will be read with profit by all those concerned with the history of literary criticism and aesthetic theory.

The definitive English version of three landmark works of world literatureContaining three of Goethe’s major prose works, this volume explores a range of themes: unfulfilled love, infidelity, divorce, tragic love, fantasy, and moral rebirth. One of Goethe’s best-known works, The Sorrows of Young Werther, explores the extremes of the subjective experience through the novel’s depiction of a sensitive young man caught up in a love impossible to fulfill. In Elective Affinities, a novel of tragic love, Goethe employs all the requisites of sentimental romance to give a deeply ironic perspective to the idea of love. As the title indicates, Novella examines the possibilities inherent in this genre.The Collected Works of Goethe presents modern translations of a representative portion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s vast body of work. Selected from more than 140 volumes in German, this twelve-volume series remains the standard collection in English and features poetry, drama, fiction, memoir, criticism, and scientific writing.

The discipline of rhetoric—adapted through a wide range of reformulations to the specific requirements of Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance societies—dominated European education and discourse, whether public or private, for more than two thousand years. The end of classical rhetoric's domination was brought about by a combination of social and cultural transformations that occurred between the seventeenth and ninteenth centuries.Concurrent with the "theory boom" of recent decades, rhetoric has reappeared as a center of discussion in the humanities and social sciences. Rhetorical inquiry, as it is thought and practiced today, occurs in an interdisciplinary matrix that touches on philosophy, linguistics, communication studies, psychoanalysis, cognitive science, sociology, anthropology, and political theory. Rhetoric is now an area of study without accepted certainties, a territory not yet parceled into topical subdivisions, a mode of discourse that adheres to no fixed protocols. It is a noisy field in the cybernetic sense of the term: a fertile ground for creative innovation.This volume embodies the interdisciplinary character of rhetoric. The essays draw on wide-ranging conceptual resources, and combine historical, theoretical, and practical points of view. The contributors develop a variety of perspectives on the central concepts of rhetorical theory, on the work of some of its major proponents, and on the breaks and continuities of its history. The spectrum of thematic concern is broad, extending from the Greek polis to the multi-ethnic city of modern America, from Aristotle to poststructuralism, from questions of figural language to problems of persuasion and interaction. But a common interdisciplinary interest runs through all the essays: the effort to rethink rhetoric within the contemporary epistemological situation. In this sense, the book opens new possiblities for research within the human sciences.

The discipline of rhetoric—adapted through a wide range of reformulations to the specific requirements of Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance societies—dominated European education and discourse, whether public or private, for more than two thousand years. The end of classical rhetoric's domination was brought about by a combination of social and cultural transformations that occurred between the seventeenth and ninteenth centuries.Concurrent with the "theory boom" of recent decades, rhetoric has reappeared as a center of discussion in the humanities and social sciences. Rhetorical inquiry, as it is thought and practiced today, occurs in an interdisciplinary matrix that touches on philosophy, linguistics, communication studies, psychoanalysis, cognitive science, sociology, anthropology, and political theory. Rhetoric is now an area of study without accepted certainties, a territory not yet parceled into topical subdivisions, a mode of discourse that adheres to no fixed protocols. It is a noisy field in the cybernetic sense of the term: a fertile ground for creative innovation.This volume embodies the interdisciplinary character of rhetoric. The essays draw on wide-ranging conceptual resources, and combine historical, theoretical, and practical points of view. The contributors develop a variety of perspectives on the central concepts of rhetorical theory, on the work of some of its major proponents, and on the breaks and continuities of its history. The spectrum of thematic concern is broad, extending from the Greek polis to the multi-ethnic city of modern America, from Aristotle to poststructuralism, from questions of figural language to problems of persuasion and interaction. But a common interdisciplinary interest runs through all the essays: the effort to rethink rhetoric within the contemporary epistemological situation. In this sense, the book opens new possiblities for research within the human sciences.

In this book, the author has three aims: (1) 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. Remarkably enough, 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 until now unperceived despite an enormous interpretive literature. 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 astonishingly bold poetic experimentation. In this sense, Goethe's lyric can be seen to constitute one of Romanticism's earliest and most significant beginnings. In addition to its interpretive and historical dimensions, The Specular Moment pursues a methodological aim. The author has combined the insights of linguistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, social history, and philosophy in such a way that they yield a powerful and supple instrument of analysis. Thus, the book offers a fully developed 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.

In this book, the author has three aims: (1) 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. Remarkably enough, 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 until now unperceived despite an enormous interpretive literature. 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 astonishingly bold poetic experimentation. In this sense, Goethe's lyric can be seen to constitute one of Romanticism's earliest and most significant beginnings. In addition to its interpretive and historical dimensions, The Specular Moment pursues a methodological aim. The author has combined the insights of linguistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, social history, and philosophy in such a way that they yield a powerful and supple instrument of analysis. Thus, the book offers a fully developed 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.