Gottfried August Research Articles

“The Raven” and the Antebellum Culture of Bereavement

Abstract Despite the worldwide familiarity of “The Raven,” few readers are aware of the antebellum era’s elaborate cultural prescriptions for mourning that shape the poem and its thematic significance. For a missing perspective on Poe’s poem concerns the speaker’s representative behavior as genteel middle-class mourner, with the mysterious bird taking on the role of consolatory visitor, but a visitor who implicitly mocks the prescribed role of spiritual sympathizer by suggesting demonic doubts about the era’s evangelical hope of reunion in the afterlife with the beloved. Such a thematic emphasis is enhanced by the intertextual relationship of “The Raven” with relevant passages in the Bible as well as poems by Elizabeth Barrett, Gottfried August Bürger, and Felicia Hemans. While the scene enacted in “The Raven” anticipates the mourning that Poe would undergo following the death of his twenty-four-year-old wife Virginia in January 1847, it also illustrates the desperate hope for spiritual reunion notably seen in the bereavement behavior of Rufus W. Griswold, Poe’s notorious literary executor, whose young wife died in November 1842.

Volksschauspiele: Genese einer kulturgeschichtlichen Formation by Toni Bernhart

Reviewed by: Volksschauspiele: Genese einer kulturgeschichtlichen Formation by Toni Bernhart Katherine Arens Toni Bernhart, Volksschauspiele: Genese einer kulturgeschichtlichen Formation. Deutsche Literatur Studien und Quellen 31. Edited by Beate Kellner and Claudia Stockinger. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019. 399 pp. This volume originated in a 2017 Habilitationsschrift from Stuttgart (available in open access through de Gruyter's website), now expanded into a magisterial presentation of the Volksschauspiel, the Germanophone popular theater, as it has been created and studied in the scholarship, here offered by a scholar who is himself also a practicing playwright. The corpus of the Volksschauspiel includes popular theater of all genres, starting from the eighteenth century: the Viennese and southern Germanophone Volksstück, passion plays, the ritual plays of the Steiner Goetheanum, children's drama, and others. Toni Bernhart's Volksschauspiele focuses not only on these genres but also on how ideologies in aesthetics and literary studies have isolated them as somehow separate from serious art. The terms Volksschauspiel, Volksstück, and Volkstheater (9) are all in common use but need to be specified (as referring to theater history, the nineteenth-century Viennese stage, and a form of theater institution, respectively). Bernhart does so by reconstructing "die Genese der gattungstheoretischen Vorstellung des Volksschauspiels auf breiter Quellenbasis" (4)—what scholars have done to this corpus. The volume's first part (Part A, one of three) ties the terminology of Herder's idea of Volkspoesie, a discussion engaged by Gottfried August Bürger, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, and a handful of less familiar voices. The corpus of what then became "people's theater" comprised translations of Shakespeare's comedies, "Tyroler Bauernkomödien," religious and mystery plays, and even Dr. Faustus, Hans Sachs, and Nicolai's Herder and Bürger [End Page 77] parodies (16). That contemporaneous usage is confirmed by late eighteenth-century references from travel literature and other popular publications (Volksschauspiel even referred to cock fights). Bernhart finds two competing spheres of usage: "Volksschauspiel als (prä-)romantische Alternative zu gelehrter Literatur (Herder) und Volksschauspiel als didaktisches und kulturpatriotisches Institut mit oder ohne Betonung deutscher Spezifizität" (103). Part B takes up the academic study of the Volksschauspiel to critique the discipline's ideologies. The nineteenth century sought to "establish and professionalize" the then-new philology (207). Scholars took up the "Bauernspiel," "Bauernkomödie," "Bauerntheater," and more to collect and establish a canon of main authors and texts. Bernhart again adds citations from contemporaneous sources about how the texts were performed and then how scholars dealt with them (with biographical reference). A huge plus for today's researchers is Bernhart's list of important nineteenth-century collections (167), with notes about each editor's motivations and biases. Bernhart also draws on lexica, starting with Johann Christoph Adelung's dictionary, moving through the Aesthetisches Lexikon (1839) by Ignaz Jeitteles; the Allgemeines Theater-Lexikon (1842) by Robert Blum, Karl Herloßsohn, and Hermann Marggraff; and Johann Georg Krünitz's Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie (1855). Each is carefully distinguished: Jeitteles focuses on Vienna, relying on August Wilhelm von Schlegel's poetics; Blum stresses how Volksschauspiel emerged as a derogatory term for "Zauberpossen, Spektakelstücke und Lokalsachen" aimed at local publics that created fertile soil for "Gemeinheit, Unsittlichkeit und Gesinnungslosigkeit" (147). Krünitz's Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie devotes 336 pages to articles on "Volk," including "Volkstheater." Part C starts with twentieth-century scholars who wanted to institutionalize "Volksschauspielforschung etwa nach dem Vorbild des 1914 gegründeten Deutschen Volksliedarchivs in Freiburg im Breisgau" (213). At the start, Josef Nadler's Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften (1912 und 1918) differentiated "bairisch" and "tirolisch" Volksschauspielen (later informing National Socialist ethnology, 214). Several gems stand out. Bernhart's explanation of how and why Hofmannsthal used Nadler clarifies differences in the Nazi ideologies (expanded in a further section on Nadler's "geistesgeschichtliche Rassenkunde," 243, and how it stressed "Germanness"). Section 11.3 amplifies the ties between Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy and National Socialism (233), with a particular emphasis on [End Page 78] Marie Steiner as a trained actress (239) and as an editor of the older texts being revised for pageants. Bernhart also reclaims an essay by Hans Moser, Das Volksschauspiel (1935), as an excellent...

Zachodnie nowinki na wileńskiej prowincji – wpływy niemieckich poetów na ballady filomatów

The article describes the influence of foreign, mainly German, literature on the ballads of the Philomaths – Tomasz Zan, Jan Czeczot and Adam Mickiewicz. The inspirations, references, and transformations of literary themes taken from German poets are presented in chronological order. The article begins with the answer to questions: why and how Zan used Lenora by Gottfried August Bürger in Neryna and Twardowski (common character and versification, intensifying the mood of horror). The full image of foreign references in this poet's work is completed by his version of Arion, based on the literary work by August Wilhelm Schlegel. Philomath used the character of a hero from Hellas, but he presented his fate in a dramatically condensed way. All these references lead to the conclusion that Zan transformed foreign threads in his own way, treating this activity as an exercise in his literary technique. A similar approach was shown by Jan Czeczot, who focused on native themes – but he added a large dose of humor, which was characteristic also of the most outstanding philosopher-writer, Adam Mickiewicz. The author of Ballady i romanse included in his collection a free translation of Friedrich Schiller’s Rękawiczka. He gave up the local color in it, creating a more “homely” version. In Świtezianka and Pierwiosnek, Mickiewicz referred to Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Świtezianka refers to Rybak with the motif of a fantastic figure emerging from the water. Pierwiosnek, like Fiołek, contains the lament of a metaphorical flower addressed to an insensitive lover. An analysis of Mickiewicz's references to his masters shows that this poet, like his friends, treated ballads as poetic exercises. He wanted to challenge his favorite writers. At the same time, these references confirm his manifestation of creative freedom. It turns out that the philomath ballads share the same approach to creation in this genre, which has been found in the example of transformations of material taken from foreign literature.

Kārlis Hūgenbergers 19. gadsimta sākumā latviešu literārās kultūras vēsturē

In the article, the literary works of Baltic German writer Carl Hugenberger have been explored. Anthology of his poetry translations, “Derrigs laika kaweklis” (Useful Pastime, I–II, 1826–1827), has been analysed. The anthology was significant in the emancipation of Latvian literary culture and liberation from moral didacticism as well as the development of the self-sufficient aesthetic value of literature. Thus, the anthology prepared the way for the formation of Latvian national literature in the mid-19th century. Special attention has been turned towards Hugenberger’s translations of poems by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Besides, the evaluation and reception of Hugenberger’s works have been explored. The article concludes that despite the innovative role and poetic achievements of Hugenberger’s poetry, it did not gain popularity among wider circles of the Latvian reading public and met criticism regarding the shortcomings in the translation techniques that can be explained by the limits of the underdeveloped Latvian language at the time. The most important episodes in Hugenberger’s biography have been outlined as well as his religious hymns and works of popular enlightenment, including translations of “Schillings-Bücher des Rauhen Hauses”, a book series of German Inner mission, works by Jeremias Gotthelf, August Kotzebue, Gottfried August Bürger et al. Special attention has been paid to previously unidentified originals of Hugenberger’s translations – works by Matthias Claudius, Johann Hinrich Wichern, Heinrich Alexander Seidel, and Adolph Krüger as well as previously underexamined partial translation of Johann Peter Hebel’s “Allemanische Gedichte”. The literary works of Hugenberger have been interpreted within the context of the literary praxis of the late popular enlightenment in the Baltics.

The Evolution of C. P. E. Bach’s St. John Passions

During his twenty-year tenure as music director of the five principal churches in Hamburg (1768–1788), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach prepared twenty-one Passions, five each on the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John, and six on the Gospel of Matthew. The longest setting also happens to be the first, the St. Matthew Passion of 1769, the music of which was later incorporated into his Passions-Cantate Wq 233. Even this first Passion uses chorales from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and all twenty-one Passions are pasticcios to a greater or lesser extent. The earlier settings mostly incorporate music by other composers, including Georg Philipp Telemann, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, Georg Anton Benda, and Gottfried August Homilius, often using parody texts for the arias. But in his second decade, Bach more frequently adapted his own songs as choruses or arias, and in his last settings he wrote almost entirely new music. This article traces the evolution of his St. John Passion settings from his first setting in 1772 through his last in 1788.

Remembering Klopstock's Mitausdruck

Remembering Klopstock's Mitausdruck Lea Pao "Wer kennt ihn heute?"1 July, 1805: The Edinburgh Review, one of the most influential magazines of political and literary criticism in nineteenth-century Great Britain, published a review of An Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language (1804), a book on modern and classical versification written by William Mitford. Mitford, an historian of Ancient Greece whom Lord Byron once called "perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever,"2 had published a first edition of the book anonymously in 1774. By 1804, Mitford's Inquiry had become a comprehensive treatise on the mechanics of poetic meter. His long-standing interest in the relationship between poetry and music led him to advocate for the organization of verse based on tonality (that is, musical pitch produced by accents or stresses) rather than quantification (counting the number of syllables by measuring their length). While the mechanics of Greek and Latin offer clear rules regarding the harmony of poetic language, Mitford wrote, "for the very different harmony of English verse no rule could be obtained."3 His championing of spoken English as a poetic language for "the cause of English letters" (Mitford n.p.) was, in this way, a contribution to one of the most debated questions of English prosody at the time: should English poets measure their verse by sound or by syllable? The author of the review was William Herbert, a botanist, politician, scholar of poetry, politician, and clergyman. Best known for his work on hybridization and the evolution of bulbous plants, Herbert also cultivated a keen interest in poetry. He had just published a curious Greek translation of Ossian's Latin poem "Darthula" in 1801, followed by a selection of Icelandic and old Scandinavian poetry in English translation.4 In his lengthy review of Mitford's book, Herbert passionately contested Mitford's argument that Latin verse is "regulated solely by certain dispositions of quantities,"5 arguing that it ignores the importance of accents as a means of regulating classical meter. This was the starting point of Herbert's somewhat bitter general assessment of modern verse, especially of the kind written by poets who confuse accent and quantity and as a result produce "faulty" poetry. Among the worst offenders of such verse, Herbert wrote, was Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. "Klopstock, whose reputation is perhaps undeservedly great," Herbert wrote, "has prefixed to his Messiah a treatise upon that disgusting abortion, which is called the German hexameter."6 Modern reinventions [End Page 101] of the hexameter such as Klopstock's, he argued, were based on the entirely false belief that Latin meter is regulated by quantities when, in fact, one can find numerous rules deriving from Latin accentuation. Though there is a great deal to be said about whether the German hexameter is, in fact, an abortion, what interests me in this essay is the claim Herbert makes about Klopstock—or rather the relationship between the generality of a statement such as the one about Klopstock's "undeservedly great reputation" and the particularity of the grounds on which he is rejected. At the time Herbert published his review on An Inquiry—two years after Klopstock's death in 1803—German literature was beginning to make waves among British poets and writers. In the 1790s, William Taylor had published English translations of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris), Christoph Martin Wielands's Göttergespräche (Dialogues of the Gods), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise), and Gottfried August Bürger's Lenore (Lenora), contributing to the enthusiastic reception of German Romanticism among British poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge.7 William Herbert observed "the extraordinary hexameter-mania [that] had lately pervaded Germany"8 with concerned disdain. He saw the problem with both Mitford's theory of versification and Klopstock's hexameter not so much as a matter of choosing accentual verse over quantitative meters, but as a misguided linguistic and poetic understanding of how accentuation and quantification work both in Latin and Greek and in English. "All this be nonsense, as unmixed as ever flowed from the pen of man, it deserves some notice," Herbert continued, "as having...

THE ENDURANCE OF THE GOTHIC THE ROMANTICS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE VAMPIRE MYTH

The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, also known as the period of Romanticism, were marked with the interest of the authors in nature and emotions, but also in the supernatural, horrible and the exotic. Although it was the era of reason and the progress of sciences, critics have identified the significance of the Gothic influence on the works of most of the English Romantic figures, among which Lord Byron is known to have had the major influence on the creation and persistence of the vampire figure, as a Gothic trope, haunting the last and this century’s literature and film. This paper attempts to unravel the origins and nature of the mysterious cultural appeal to the literary vampire by tracing its origins from Eastern European folklore, the first poem titled “Der Vampir”(1743) by Heinrich Ossenfelder, to the German Sturm and Drang poets, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Gottfried August Buerger and their respective poems “Die Braut von Korinth” (1789) and “Lenore” (1773). The role of British ballad writers Southey, Lewis and Scott and their ballad collections will be considered as a significant effort to “renew the spirit” of British poetry which according to Scott had reached “a remarkably low ebb in Britain” (as cited in Thomson, 2002, p.80). Another literary figure engaged in writing Gothic ballads following the tradition of Mathew Lewis, not so well-known during her time, was the Scottish writer Anne Bannerman. Her ballad “Dark Ladie” deserves special attention in this context, as it features a female character who is transformed from the previous ballad tradition: from a passive victim of male seduction, here she becomes a fatal woman who comes back from the undead to seek for revenge and initiates the line of female vampires such as Keats’s “Lamia” and Coleridge’s “Christabel”. Thus, this paper elaborates on the major contributors to the Gothic stream in poetry in the specific period, mainly ballads, and traces the presence and development of Gothic elements and vampiric features. The continuous appeal to the Gothic found its place in the works of several major English Romantics, even though they put great effort to differentiate their poetry from the popular literature of the day – Gothic novels. This paper will concentrate on Lord Byron’s Oriental tale The Giaour (1813) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Both works incorporate Gothic themes, settings and characters, but there hasn’t been much literary focus with reference to the vampire theme they are based on. Although, critics have observed the contribution of the ambivalent vampire figure in Romantic literature, critical evaluation of the growth of this Gothic character in these two poems until now is incomplete. Hence, we will focus on Byron and Coleridge’s appropriation of the vampire figure and their contribution to the growth of this character. The various metaphoric usages of this character will also be explored and defined to determine their purpose.

THE ENDURANCE OF THE GOTHIC THE ROMANTICS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE VAMPIRE MYTH

The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, also known as the period of Romanticism, were marked with the interest of the authors in nature and emotions, but also in the supernatural, horrible and the exotic. Although it was the era of reason and the progress of sciences, critics have identified the significance of the Gothic influence on the works of most of the English Romantic figures, among which Lord Byron is known to have had the major influence on the creation and persistence of the vampire figure, as a Gothic trope, haunting the last and this century’s literature and film. This paper attempts to unravel the origins and nature of the mysterious cultural appeal to the literary vampire by tracing its origins from Eastern European folklore, the first poem titled “Der Vampir”(1743) by Heinrich Ossenfelder, to the German Sturm and Drang poets, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Gottfried August Buerger and their respective poems “Die Braut von Korinth” (1789) and “Lenore” (1773). The role of British ballad writers Southey, Lewis and Scott and their ballad collections will be considered as a significant effort to “renew the spirit” of British poetry which according to Scott had reached “a remarkably low ebb in Britain” (as cited in Thomson, 2002, p.80). Another literary figure engaged in writing Gothic ballads following the tradition of Mathew Lewis, not so well-known during her time, was the Scottish writer Anne Bannerman. Her ballad “Dark Ladie” deserves special attention in this context, as it features a female character who is transformed from the previous ballad tradition: from a passive victim of male seduction, here she becomes a fatal woman who comes back from the undead to seek for revenge and initiates the line of female vampires such as Keats’s “Lamia” and Coleridge’s “Christabel”. Thus, this paper elaborates on the major contributors to the Gothic stream in poetry in the specific period, mainly ballads, and traces the presence and development of Gothic elements and vampiric features. The continuous appeal to the Gothic found its place in the works of several major English Romantics, even though they put great effort to differentiate their poetry from the popular literature of the day – Gothic novels. This paper will concentrate on Lord Byron’s Oriental tale The Giaour (1813) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Both works incorporate Gothic themes, settings and characters, but there hasn’t been much literary focus with reference to the vampire theme they are based on. Although, critics have observed the contribution of the ambivalent vampire figure in Romantic literature, critical evaluation of the growth of this Gothic character in these two poems until now is incomplete. Hence, we will focus on Byron and Coleridge’s appropriation of the vampire figure and their contribution to the growth of this character. The various metaphoric usages of this character will also be explored and defined to determine their purpose.

Gottfried August Homilius: Thematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke by Uwe Wolf (review)

Reviewed by: Gottfried August Homilius: Thematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke by Uwe Wolf Jennifer A. Ward and Martina Falletta Gottfried August Homilius: Thematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke. By Uwe Wolf. (Ausgewählte Werke, Reihe 5: Supplement, Bd. 2.) Stuttgart: Carus, 2014. [688 p. ISBN 9783899481860. i169.] Abbreviations, music examples, bibliography, indexes. Carus-Verlag took double notice in 2014, when two of the composers in its program— Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) and Gottfried August Homilius (1714–1785)—reached their tercentennials. The publisher marked the anniversaries of these two nearly exact contemporaries with one major thematic catalog each. For Bach, it was a thematic catalog of his vocal works (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke. Teil 2: Vokalwerk, ed. Wolfram Ensslin et al., Bach-Repertorium vol. III/2 [Stuttgart: Carus, 2014]; the catalog of his instrumental works is forthcoming). For Homilius, the director of church music at the main Protestant churches in Dresden (the Kreuz kirche, Sophienkirche, and Frauenkirche) from 1755 until his death, it was the thematic catalog of all of his works, under review here. Indeed, the compilation of the Homilius catalog was influenced by developments in C. P. E. Bach scholarship. Initially intended to “provide a useful overview of the works and their sources as quickly as possible and to leave everything else to later scholarship,” the Homilius catalog was significantly expanded when Bach sources were discovered among the Berlin Sing-Akademie materials that resurfaced in the late 1990s (p. 13). Scholars sifting through Bach’s pasticcio cantatas and Passion settings discovered how much music Bach had borrowed from Homilius and the utility of a full catalog was recognized—in particular one that includes incipits and scoring for every movement to aid identifications. Adding to the benefits of a thorough catalog is organizing the web of extant material: Wolf lists over 125 institutions and private collections with surviving sources across Europe, [End Page 380] Russia, and the United States. Numerous manuscript copies of Homilius’s works are still extant (the Répertoire international des sources musicales [RISM] online catalog currently indexes over 1,800), some in versions with regional variations, and many with questionable attributions. Scholars have only partially evaluated the oeuvre of Homilius; he has not enjoyed the same place in either the literature or the performing repertoire as his contemporary Bach. This catalog of works by Homilius, who was a pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach and was “during his lifetime and long thereafter . . . incontrovertibly the composer par excellence of Protestant church music,” is a significant contribution to scholarship that will be instrumental in making the works of this composer more widely known, which include ca. 180 cantatas and 60 motets (p. 13). The author, Uwe Wolf, has been engaged with the music of Homilius for a considerable time and has contributed significantly to the renaissance of his works that began in 2000. Wolf published an initial list of Homilius’s works in 2009 as part of a concise overview of the composer’s life and output (Uwe Wolf, Gottfried August Homilius: Studien zu Leben und Werk mit Werkverzeichnis [kleine Ausgabe] [Stuttgart: Carus, 2009]). The HoWV numbers (Homilius Werkverzeichnis, or Homilius catalog of works) that were introduced in this simplified inventory were carried over to the full thematic catalog, and works that have been discovered since then were inserted into the list and marked with an N for Nachtrag (addendum); for example, HoWV II.107N, “Nun darf ich nicht verzagen,” comes after II.107 as a further cantata belonging to the third Sunday after Trinity Sunday, and before II.108, a work for the fourth Sunday (which can expand to N2 and beyond, should additional works come to light). The book begins with a “Preface” and “Guide to the catalog” in German and English. The guide explains the structure of entries thoroughly and with clarity, so not only will readers understand the scope and intention of the information provided about each work, but those with a limited grasp of German will be well-equipped to navigate the catalog, which is in German only. Works in the catalog are divided into twelve categories (including vocal works, chorale settings, other instrumental works, and writings...

Herder Jahrbuch VIII/2006 (review)

Reviewed by: Herder Jahrbuch VIII/2006 Steven D. Martinson Wulf Koepke and Karl Menges, eds., Herder Jahrbuch VIII/2006. Heidelberg: Synchron Wissenschaftsverlag der Autoren, 2006. 206 pp. This is a fine collection of articles by scholars from three countries. All of the contributions, whether in German or English, are well researched and expand our knowledge of Herder and the eighteenth century. Günter Arnold (Weimar) and Rüdiger Singer (Göttingen) consider Herder’s appropriation and reinterpretation of the ancients. Arnold reviews Herder’s excerpt on Lucretius in the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, while Singer explores the impact of Philoctetes’s wailing in Sophocles’s tragedy on Herder’s cathartic poetics of unarticulated sounds as found in several of his writings, such as Kritisches Wäldchen and the Abhandlung Über den Ursprung der Sprache. Singer makes clear the differences between Herder and Lessing on the nature and function of [End Page 287] catharsis and advances the original idea that Herder’s indictment of the “höhnischen Geistergeheul” of the figure of Lenore in Gottfried August Bürger’s poem by the same title actually constitutes a call for “Mit-Menschlichkeit” (80). Rainer Schmusch (Saarbrücken) examines, for the first time, the reception of Herder in the history of German musicology, while Sonia Sikka (Ottawa) carefully considers Herder’s anti-racism without glossing over the young writer’s evaluative judgments about individual peoples. In effect, Sikka shows why it is that Herder avoided the words “blood” and “race.” In addition to the coverage of Herder, there are two articles on the work of his contemporaries. Edward T. Larkin (Durham) defines what he calls the Platonic borders in the writings of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, and F. Corey Roberts (DeKalb) reassesses J. G. Hamann’s historical language and the subjective communication of truth. Karin Tebben (Heidelberg) establishes parallels between Herder’s historical-philosophical understanding and the autobiographical practice of writing in the work of Peter Härtling. We will focus primarily on three additional articles and the review essay that concludes the volume. Ernst A. Menze (Rhinebeck) expands our knowledge of the reception of Herder’s ideas on religion and theology on the American transcendentalists. Two of Herder’s writings became wellsprings of creation that advanced the cause of transcendentalists like Octavius Brooks Frothingham, George Bancroft, George Ripley, Theodore Parker, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie and the Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend. O. B. Frothingham considered Herder to be a companion in the search for those “springs of inspiration in the human mind, whence all poetry proceeded” (28). George Bancroft wrote in the twentieth volume of The North American Review that Herder’s Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend “are full of instruction and good sentiments,” while, he adds, Herder’s essay on the spirit of Hebrew poetry “is full of original, profound, and interesting criticism . . . illustrating the rich imagery, the brilliant and sublime thoughts and language of the ancient prophets” (31). George Ripley praised Herder as “‘the grand High Priest of Humanity’ and the ‘unwearied seeker of spiritual Truth and Beauty’” (32). With respect to women’s contributions to the transcendentalist movement, three of the six parts of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s essay on The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry were published in The Christian Examiner, in 1834, albeit eight years after she had composed them. We look forward to Menze’s future treatment of Herder’s reception in the work of Margaret Fuller’s “favorite,” Theodore Parker. Katherine Arens begins her excellent contribution, “Herder’s Journey to Hermeneutic Conversion,” by recounting Herder’s Auseinandersetzung with Friedrich Just Riedel’s aesthetics in the Fourth Kritisches Wäldchen and following the argument into the Journal auf das Jahr 1769. She suggests that Herder respected readers as potential agents of knowledge whose readings are “performable” (44). Herder’s employment of the metaphor of the ship is understood not simply as a sign for his journey but as his self-authorization as a reader (51) and, we could add, the writer’s self-legitimation. Arens presents Herder in “a new role as an intellectual, a new servant of and leader for the state,” dedicating himself to “the...

Of Mice and Sparrows: Nature and Power in the Late Eighteenth Century

A comparison of the German poet Gottfried August Bürger with his contemporary, the Scottish poet Robert Burns, reveals many similarities in their lives, in their poetic achievements and in the ways in which their writing has been received. Both similarities and differences are put into focus by a close examination of two poems which are based on the same motif, a chance encounter between an individual and a member of the animal kingdom. Bürger and Burns both use the realistic portrayal of everyday situations in order to reflect on human nature and the potential of human society.

Nur um Himmels Willen keine Satyren ... Deutsche Satire und Satiretheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts im Kontext von Anglophilie, Swift-Rezeption und asthetische Theorie

Kammerer, Herald. Nur um Himmels Willen keine Satyren ... Deutsche Satire and Satiretheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts im Kontext von Anglophilie, Swift-Rezeption and asthetische Theorie. Heidelberg: Winter, 1999. 353 pp. and 6 illustrations. DM 88.00 paperback. This book, a 1998 dissertation from Munich University, distances itself from the dominant scholarship in German literature on satire, which has mainly relied on official definitions of satire claiming normative and didactic intentions for the satirical writers. After providing a careful outline of the current research on satire, both in German and in Anglo-American contexts, Kammerer shows that this official approach involves a contradiction. In eighteenth century Germany, Jonathan Swift was considered the exemplary satirist and while he was admired greatly for his individualism, wit, humor, and spleen despite his uncompromising sharpness and aggressive tone, his contribution to the theory of the genre remained ignored in the scholarship of Germanistik. Satire in German literature was conceptualized only in unifying pedagogical terms, as if addressed to the society as a whole, or reduced to the service of the Enlightenment's education program without ever taking laughter, pleasure, or specific sensory aspects into account. Because of their fixation on normative and didactic purposes, German definitions and theories of satire have, according to Kammerer, neither done justice to Swift's path-breaking use of this genre, nor to the praxis of German satirists whose work also exceeds such unnecessary narrow boundaries. Kammerer develops his own pragmatic approach to satire inspired by Swift and a sensualist aesthetic that is increasingly gaining attention in eighteenth-century studies. He focuses on three German texts: Jonathan Karl Wezel's novel Belphegor (1776), Gottfried August Burger's Munchhausen (1788), and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Ausfuhrliche Erklarung der Hogarthschen Kupferstiche (1794-99). The first part of the book offers a detailed report on the German scholarship on satire that he then contrasts to Anglo-American literary approaches. Against the dominant model of satire in German scholarship, interpreted as a means to transmit bourgeois ideology while addressing the public sphere as defined by Kosellek, Habermas, and Vierhaus, Kammerer argues that satire rather works within an individualistic anthropology as suggested by Hobbes, or as described in the work of Locke, where the notion of society has different connotations. Whereas Kosellek, Rabener, Riedel, Waser and others claim that the satire is non-political (Anspruch auf Uberparteilichkeit [27]) and altruistic (allgemeine Menschenliebe), the same authors take issue with the aggressive tone of satires which does not fit this norm. Also the entry for satire in Zedler's UniversalLexikon (vol. 34, 1742) includes warnings against satires that do not keep to the expectation of public peace. …

Taking Animals Seriously: William Wordsworth and the Claims of Ecological Romanticism

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