Bethany Lutheran College
Goethe
Dramatic Theory and Criticism THTR 420
Peter Bloedel
Henry Heyer
12/2/14
Out of all of Germany’s history, one theorist and philosopher stands out as having had a major impact during the tail end of the Age of Enlightenment. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of the most influential men in regards to theatre, and the theory, behind how and why it is made. Furthermore, he helped to usher in the era of “Sturm und Drang” in literature. This paper will attempt to provide insight to Goethe’s life, his works, his ideas, and his influence on culture still. It all begins with a “daemonic, gifted youth” (Ludwig 11).
Goethe was born on the 28th of August, 1749, in the city of Frankfurt-am-Main, as the “clock struck
…show more content…
These contacts with the world as a whole, more than just an inspiration for poetry and drama, helped to shape Goethe’s views on the world and gave him an understanding other young writers like himself lacked. In fact, Reed theorizes that these experiences are precisely what saved Goethe from burning out as the other “comets” of the “Sturm und Drang” era did (Reed 30-31). He was not entirely satisfied in Weimar, and in 1786 he left for the Roman respite of Italy (Carus 38). Here he was able to work on the many projects he had left unfinished in Weimar, finishing his play Egmont and achieving much on Tasso and Faust (Carus 38-39). His time in Italy was just over two years, and upon his return to Weimar in 1788 he met Christian August Vulpius, an esteemed poet and playwright, whose sister, Christiana, would bear Goethe’s only son the following year (Carus 42). His thoughts also turned to the scientific world, writing poetry to illustrate different theories and accompanying the Duke on several journeys abroad (Reed 43-44). It was at this time that he re-read Spinoza, as there was a controversy about Spinoza’s atheism and his influence on the scientific world, and subscribed to Spinoza’s idea that “ ‘The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God’ – an immanent God, that is, accessible to direct seeing, not just unguaranteed faith” (Reed 46). This idea permeates throughout Goethe’s Faust, even as he opens his scene
Goethe, Johann W. V. “Faust.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature: 1800-1900. Eds. Sarah Lawall and Maynard Mack. 2nd ed. Vol. E. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. 774. Print.
In terms of artists and their influences, the case of Nietzsche and Wagner has been the focal point of discussion between many great academic minds of the last century. The controversy surrounding the relationship has led many to postulate that the eventual break between the two men may have contributed to the untimely death of Wagner in 1882, and Nietzsche's eight-year writing spurt from 1883 - 1888.
The beauty of Nietzsche’s philosophy lies in his prose. His thought and written word are poetically intellectual. His theologies on morality, the meaning of existence and the individual have influenced philosophers, such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault; the founding fathers of psychology, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and writers, such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. Without a doubt he is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, inspiring every field of theology and art.
Bishop, Paul. "The Guilty Hero, Or: The Tragic Salvation of Faust." A Companion to Goethe's Faust: Parts I and II. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001. 56-75. Print.
Goethe's "Faust" could be called a comedy as readily as it is subtitled "A Tragedy." In the course of the play, the author finds comic or ironic ways to either mock or punish religionists, atheists, demons, and deities. Despite the obvious differences between these, Goethe unites them all by the common threads of ego and ridiculousness. Thus, the play as a whole becomes more of a commentary against absurdity than against religion.
At First the article Touches on the questioning of what Faust is. In summery, Faust is the protagonist of an old German story about a guy who is actually really successful, but at the same time is somewhat dissatisfied with his life life. He had a serious lust for earthly happiness, alo...
Wyatt, C. (2010). Friedrich Nietzsche. In Tameri Guide for Writers. Retrieved December 6, 2010, from http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/nietzsche.shtml
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust. Trans. Randall Jarrell. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Print.
...n cooperation. It is also interesting how this problem expands into Goethe's Faust and Italian Journey and seems to be the basis of a greater theme in his literature. The question of Goethe's appropriation of nature could be whether he subscribes to a mechanical or magical philosophy in MacLennan's terms. Either master to nature or companion, Goethe's relationship with nature is dynamic and complex.
After these influences, Goethe definitively abandoned the Rococo style of his beginnings and wrote several works that initiated a new poetics, among them Songs of Sesenheim, lyric poems of simple and spontaneous tone, and On German Architecture (1773), hymn in prose dedicated to the architect of the cathedral of Strasbourg, and who inaugurated the cult to the genius. In 1772 he moved to Wetzlar, seat of the Imperial Court, where he met Charlotte Buff, fiancee of his friend Kestner, which was set. This frustrated passion inspired his first novel, The Sufferings of the Young Werther, a work that caused a furor all over Europe and that made the paradigmatic novel of the new movement that was being born in Germany, Romanticism. Back in Frankfurt,
The Romantic Hero in Goethe's Faust Works Cited Not Included Long hailed as the watershed of Romantic literature, Goethe’s Faust uses the misadventures of its hero to parallel the challenges that pervaded European society in the dynamic years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Faust is the prototypical Romantic hero because the transformation of his attitudes mirrors the larger transformation that was occurring in the society in which Goethe conceived the play. Faust’s odyssey transports him from adherence to the cold rationale of the Enlightenment to a passion for the pleasures that came to define the Romantic spirit. Faust not only expresses the moral contradictions and spiritual yearnings of a man in search of fulfillment, but also portrays the broader mindset of a society that was groping for meaning in a world where reason no longer sufficed as a catalyst for human cultural life. The period of German Romanticism in which Goethe wrote Faust was plagued with the same intrinsic turmoil that Faust himself felt prior to making his deal with Mephisto.
The Romanticism period is marked by changes in societal beliefs as a rejection of the values and scientific thought pursued during the Age of Enlightenment. During this period, art, music, and literature are seen as high achievement, rather than the science and logic previously held in esteem. Nature is a profound subject in the art and literature and is viewed as a powerful force. Searching for the meaning of self becomes a noble quest to undertake. In the dramatic tragedy of “Faust” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, we find a masterpiece of Romanticism writing that includes the concepts that man is essentially good, the snare of pride, and dealing with the supernatural.
The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus is Marlowe's misreading of the drama of the morality tradition, the Faust legend, and, ironically, his own Tamburlaine plays. In the development of the character of Doctor Faustus, we find one of the supreme artistic achievements of English dramatic literature, a milestone of artistic creativity and originality. The force of Marlowe's dramatic poetry resonates with lyrical intensity in its dialectic between world and will. Not only is Faustus the first true dramatic character of any psychological, moral, and philosophical depth in English literature of the modern period, but in his creation of this unique character we see Marlowe on the verge of Shakespearean characterization, that supreme artistic achievement that Harold Bloom calls the invention of the human personality.
Owing to this, not only Nietzsche’s critics, but his admirers, including some members of the Nazi party, have ignored his critical insistence on sublimation, and construed his conception of the ‘will to power’ and his opposition to Christianity in terms of wantonness and brutality. Furthermore, Nietzsche in his style of writing is more poetic than philosophical. Owing to this, Richard Rorty comments on the argumentative systematic philosophers such as Nietzsche, that whatever else he (Nietzsche) may be, he is not a philosopher. This implies that his work is more of a literature than philosophy, and so, one may be tempted to just regard Nietzsche as an author of literature or
Discuss the relationship between individual and society in Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther. What features of Werther’s individuality make him incapable of taking up a “normal” position within society?