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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Enlightenment Thought in the Writings of Goethe: A Contribution to the History of Ideas

Enlightenment Thought in the Writings of Goethe: A Contribution to the History of Ideas

Kerry, Paul E.

Paperback

Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture, Book 35

PhilosophyLiterary CriticismGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 1571134077
ISBN13: 9781571134073
Publisher: Camden House (NY)
Published: May 1 2009
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.78
Height: 0.55 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Shows Goethe, the most famous of German writers, as a child of the Enlightenment.

Throughout his oeuvre Goethe invokes the writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment: Voltaire and Goldsmith, Sterne and Bayle, Beccaria and Franklin. And he does not merely reference them: their ideas make up the salt of his most acclaimed works. Like Hume before him, Goethe takes up the topic of suicide, but in a best-selling novel, Werther; the beating heart of Faust I is the fate of a woman who commits infanticide, a burning social issue ofhis age; in an article for a popular journal Goethe takes up the cause of Kant and Penn, who wrote treatises on how to establish peace in Europe. In another essay Goethe calls for reconciliation between Germans who had fought against each other in those same Wars, as well as for worldwide understanding between Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Heathens. Professor Kerry shows that Goethe is a child of the Enlightenment and an innovator of its legacy. To do sohe discusses a chronological swath of Goethe's works, both popular and neglected, and shows how each of them engages Enlightenment concerns.

Paul Kerry is Professor of History at Brigham Young University.

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