Pedagogy and Androgyny in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

This entry on Maß (moderation, measure) explores a concept that has not received much attention in Goethe scholarship and makes a case for its usefulness and versatility in tracking how Goethe addresses a philosophical issue with a history stretching at least back to Aristotle’s conception of “the golden mean.” It shows how Goethe’s writings respond to numerous issues connected with the concept of moderation, ranging from the problem of self-moderation, when an individual’s own internal calibration comes in conflict with societal norms, to the more theoretical question of how to define the correct standard of measure (Maßstab). The discussion of moderation in Goethe’s work is, to be sure, coupled with its opposite, namely the potentially deadly threat of immoderation and excess, such as one finds in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther), Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), and Torquato Tasso (1790). Such potential conflicts, which also raise questions of where to position the standard of measure (Maßstab) of behavior, lead naturally into contexts of scientific experimentation, as in Goethe’s essay “Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt” (1792; The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject), where such standards take on a different valence from their role in mathematically based natural sciences. In addition, Goethe’s novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities), provides a poetic model where conflicts between individually and socially calibrated notions of measure and moderation play out with major ethical consequences. The entry concludes with a reflection on different kinds of aesthetic experience, each with its particular understanding of Maß: the individual’s appreciation of the sublime, the theatrical performance, and the embodiment of the self through poetic meter. Throughout these examples, the entry will underscore the role of narrative constraints: regardless of whether the medium is prose or poetry, one finds that questions of Maß as moderation in Goethe’s writings are often accompanied by questions of narrative control and excess. The following overview and analysis of Maß in Goethe’s writing will show that this term is a nodal point of ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic concerns.

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INDIVIDUAÇÃO E BILDUNG NO ROMANCE BURGUÊS

BALEIA NA REDE (Cessada) ◽

10.36311/1808-8473.2010.v1n7.1508 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 1 (7) ◽

Author(s):

Manoela Hoffman de OLIVEIRA

Keyword(s):

Thomas Mann ◽

Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

Esse artigo aborda a relação entre os conceitos de individuação e Bildung e discute brevemente, segundo esse prisma, alguns aspectos das histórias dos protagonistas dos romances de Goethe e Thomas Mann, Os Anos de Aprendizado de Wilhelm Meister (Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre) e A Montanha Mágica (Der Zauberberg), respectivamente.

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Lyckans administration

K&K - Kultur og Klasse ◽

10.7146/kok.v44i121.23725 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 44 (121) ◽

pp. 135-152

Author(s):

Thomas Götselius

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

Local Administration ◽

The Novel ◽

Sovereign Power ◽

Theoretical Level ◽

German State ◽

State Reform ◽

Late 18Th Century ◽

Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre ◽

The Subject

This article engages in the new concept of individual happiness that spread in the 18th Century and in Goethe’s pivotal novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96). In this novel, the process of “Bildung” is designed to lead the protagonist to happiness, but happiness turns out to be possible only if the process can be governed from the outside, by powers alien to the subject. For this reason, the article argues that the notion of happiness orchestrated in the novel is not based on a revolutionary concept of happiness or a victorious Enlightenment critique, but on a concept derived from a more local field of knowledge, namely “Polizeywissenschaft”. Central to German state reform, and the practices of local administration in the late 18th Century, “Polizeywissenschaft” was developed in order to render happiness to both states and individuals, and it did so by means of surveillance and secret intervention in everyday life. On a theoretical level, the breakthrough of ”the police” during the century could be mapped as an outcome of the transition from a sovereign power regime to a biopolitical one, in Michel Foucault’s teminology. In Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, as in the biopolitics encoded in the “Polizeywissenschaft,” the experience of happiness is thus coupled with a new way of governing life as such.

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Uma possível definição do romance de formação como categoria autobiográfica

Literatura e Autoritarismo ◽

10.5902/1679849x21510 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Luiz Henrique Ernesto Coelho

Keyword(s):

Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre

No texto “Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele”, inscrito no romance Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Goethe descreve a formação de uma personagem feminina, baseando-se nos escritos de Susanna von Klettenberg, prima e amiga de sua mãe. A presente investigação busca problematizar as categorias definidoras da autobiografia, biografia e ficção apresentadas pelos autores Philippe Lejeune, Leonor Arfuch, Tununa Mercado, entre outros, a partir de suas possíveis abrangências para o gênero do romance. Para tanto, o texto supracitado será analisado como modelo, o qual se encontra em um topos limítrofe entre ficção, biografia e autobiografia.

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