Goethe's allegories of identity / Jane K. Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Jane K., 1943-

Series:

Haney Foundation series.

Haney Foundation Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832--Criticism and interpretation.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832--Language.

Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature.

Self in literature.

Subconsciousness in literature.

Subjectivity in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A century before psychoanalytic discourse codified a scientific language to describe the landscape of the mind, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explored the paradoxes of an interior self separate from a conscious self. Though long acknowledged by the developers of depth psychology and by its historians, Goethe's literary rendering of interiority has not been the subject of detailed analysis in itself. Goethe's Allegories of Identity examines how Goethe created the essential bridge between the psychological insights of his contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the psychoanalytic theories of his admirer Sigmund Freud. Equally fascinated and repelled by Rousseau's vision of an unconscious self, Goethe struggled with the moral question of subjectivity: what is the relation of conscience to consciousness? To explore this inner conflict through language, Goethe developed a unique mode of allegorical representation that modernized the long tradition of dramatic personification in European drama. Jane K. Brown's deft, focused readings of Goethe's major dramas and novels, from The Sorrows of Young Werther to Elective Affinities, reveal each text's engagement with the concept of a subconscious or unconscious psyche whose workings are largely inaccessible to the rational mind. As Brown demonstrates, Goethe's representational strategies fashioned a language of subjectivity that deeply influenced the conceptions of important twentieth-century thinkers such as Freud, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Chapter 1. Representing Subjectivity

Chapter 2. Goethe Contra Rousseau on Passion

Chapter 3. Goethe Contra Rousseau on Social Responsibility

Chapter 4. The Theatrical Self

Chapter 5. The Scientific Self: Identity in Faust

Chapter 6. The Narrative Self

Chapter 7. Goethe’s Angst

Chapter 8. “Es singen wohl die Nixen”: Werther and the Romantic Tale

Chapter 9. Goethe and the Uncanny

Conclusion. Classicism and Goethe’s Emotional Regime

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812209389

0812209389

OCLC:

871191892