The Specular Moment: Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

904 Pages·1996·2.81 MB·English

by  David Wellbery

THE SPECULAR MOMENT Goethe's Early
Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism
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MERIDIAN Crossing Aesthetics
Werner Hamacher & David E. Wellbery Editors
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Stanford University Press
Stanford California
1996
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THE SPECULAR MOMENT Goethe's Early
Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism
David E. Wellbery
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Stanford University Press Stanford, California
© 1996 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America CIP data appear at the end of the book
Stanford University Press publications are distributed exclusively by Stanford
University Press within the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central
America; they are distributed exclusively by Cambridge University Press
throughout the rest of the world.
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for my mother, Margaret L. Reynolds, and in memory of my father, Edward M.
Wellbery
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Acknowledgments
The first ideas for this book were sketched out during a stay at the Stanford
Humanities Center in 1982-83, and the major work of elaboration was
undertaken at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin during my fellowship year there
in 1989-90. I am grateful to both those institutions and their respective directors,
Ian Watt and Wolf Lepenies, for their support.
For their suggestive comments on portions of the book read or heard, I wish to
thank John Bender, Marshall Brown, Rüdiger Campe, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht,
Rodolphe Gasché, Fritz Gutbrodt, Werner Hamacher, Andreas Huyssen, Carol
Jacobs, Friedrich Kittler, Wolf Kittler, Eberhard Lämmert, Winfried
Menninghaus, Inka Mülder-Bach, Rainer Nägele, Peter Pütz, Tom Saine, Helmut
Schneider, Bianca Theisen, Michael Titzmann, Jürgen Trabant, Peter Utz, Hans
Vaget, Rainer Warning, Marianne Wünsch, Walter Zimmerli, and Raimar Zons.
Ernst Behler, Dorothea von Mücke, and an anonymous referee read the
penultimate version of the manuscript in its entirety and their remarks were
decisive in helping me to sharpen my argument.
Some ten years ago Klaus Weimar of the University of Zurich initiated a
dialogue with me on Goethe's poetry that has been the crucible of most of the
ideas in the book. During the same time, Helen Tartar of Stanford University
Press has provided indispensable, detailed advice on every aspect of the writing,
and her unflagging editorial commitment has sustained my belief in the project
throughout. I trust it will not be felt as a diminishment of my gratitude to those
mentioned above if I single out my
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indebtedness to these two individuals. Without their collaboration The Specular
Moment would not have been written.
An earlier, briefer version of Chapter 1 appeared in Wilfried Barner, Eberhard
Lämmert, and Norbert Oellers, eds., Unser Commercium: Goethes und Schillers
Literaturpolitik, Veröffentlichungen der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, vol. 42 (
Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984). Chapter 2 is a revised version of an article published in
Goethe Yearbook 1 ( 1982). Chapter 9 represents an expansion of my
contribution to David E. Wellbery and Klaus Weimar, Goethes "Harzreise im
Winter": Eine Deutungskontroverse ( Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1984).
Permission to use these materials is gratefully acknowledged.
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