Abstract
This article interprets the figure of Makarie from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, drawing forth the Kantian epistemological, aesthetic, and ethical foundations of the portions of the novel in which she appears, and indeed of Makarie herself. Goethe intricately and enigmatically intertwines the characterization of her with the topos of stargazing, thereby building upon Kant’s treatments of that topic in various of his writings. Cognitive responses to the perception of the heavens were constructed in the eighteenth century in distinctly gendered ways that, I argue, are key to understanding the relation of Makarie to Wilhelm Meister, and to understanding the broader significance this relationship has for the interpretation of the novel as a whole.
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