Eric A Blackall – författare

An authoritative English translation of one of the most important works in the history of the novelWilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–1796), Goethe’s second novel, is a foundational work in the history of the genre—perhaps the first Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story focusing on the growth and self-realization of the main character. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who strives to break free from the restrictive bourgeois world of his upbringing and seek fulfillment as an actor and playwright. Goethe’s novel had a huge impact on the Romantics. Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, and Schopenhauer considered it one of the most important novels yet written. Schlegel famously called it one of the “three tendencies of the age,” along with the French Revolution and the philosophy of Fichte. And Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann set poems from the novel to music. It also had a major influence on nineteenth-century British writers, including Thomas Carlyle, who was its first English translator, and George Eliot. Drawn from Princeton’s authoritative collected works of Goethe, and featuring a new introduction by David Wellbery, this is the definitive English version of a landmark of world literature.

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel of self-realization greatly admired by the Romantics, has been called the first Bildungsroman and has had a tremendous influence on the history of the German novel. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who strives to break free from the restrictive world of economics and seeks fulfillment as an actor and playwright. Along with Eric Blackall's fresh translation of the work, this edition contains notes and an afterword by the translator that aims to put this novel into historical and artistic perspective for twentieth-century readers while showing how it defies categorization.

Originally published in 1959, Dr Blackall's book cuts across the usual distinction between 'literature' and 'linguistics' in the study of modern languages. The importance of Dr Blackall's remarkable study is that one is shown both sides in this interplay in convincing detail. The study will be of interest to any student of German literature or history. It sheds light on the eighteenth century and the general movement from seventeenth-century language to ease, pliability and grace, and then to the tremendous literary achievement of the age of Goethe. Dr Blackall starts with the provincialism and confusion of German in the early eighteenth century. He examines in detail the arguments of critics, philosophers and poets who attempted to establish new standards. He discusses the principal works of literature from this special point of view. He ends with the young Goethe, the required genius who confirmed and magnificently exceeded the careful advances of his predecessors.

Adalbert Stifter (1805-68) is generally recognised in German-speaking countries to be the greatest prose-writer of Austria. First published in 1948, this was the first complete study of his work to appear in English. Stifter was born and dwelt in the village of Oberplan on the southern fringe of Bohemia. His life was uneventful, and Mr Blackall's concern is biographical study only so far as the life and background are important in a full understanding of the writings. His plan is to first give an account and analysis of Der Nachsommer, Stifter's greatest book and the work of his maturity, and to make this novel the key to all his other work as well as to his life and thought.