250 Reviews Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe. Ed. by Marianne Henn and Holger A. Pausch. (Amsterdamer Beitrage zur neueren Germanistik, 55) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2003. 437 pp. ?95; $113. ISBN 90-420-1076-2. Among the many consequences of the rise of literacy in the eighteenth century we note an increasing separation of mind from body. The practice of reading to oneself in isolation went hand in hand with a disdain for the physical, while simultaneously opening the floodgates of the imagination in a process referred to somewhat sensationally by Stephan Schindler as 'die ungeheuerliche Fleischwerdung der Phantasie'. And yet, as this fascinating volume shows, the process did not leave the body out in the cold but enabled it to be used as a heuristic cognitive tool that was empowered to the extent of influencing a host of innovative narratives and discourse networks. The reader is guided in twenty chapters through many aspects of body culture in the period, beginning with the draconian dress code that reminded me of today's kids' obsession with designer labels, except that in 1800 young officerswere actually being strangled by their own uniforms, which were so closely tailored as to match the contours of their physique. Visits to spas required constant changes of outfit, depending on whether one was out walking, taking the waters, or attending a concert. Attempts to impose a less restricting uniform on Prussian officerswere resisted, but the invention of an all-purpose 'spa outfit' was generally welcomed by the healthconscious , not least because it saved time. The majority of the chapters deal primarily with literary rather than social mat? ters. Aftera lurid account of what happened to Lazzaro Spallanzani's423 decapitated snails (not to mention the inseminated dog that this Catholic priest viewed as the high point of his career), Stefani Engelstein takes a fresh look at E. T A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann and comes up with a plausible reading that is several degrees more horrific than anything that had occurred to me. Kevin Hilliard's paper on breathing, Heather Benbow's on Ottilie's orality, or lack of it, and Andrea Heitmann's on Fraulein von Sternheim show us just how important the often carefully encoded references to corporeality and physical activity were. Alexander Mathas relates a number of Sturm und Drang heroes to fantasies of national cohesion that drew on the metaphor of the body. The physical constraints imposed on 'challenged' heroes like Ugolino and Gotz have long been recognized as forming part of a wider political discourse, but what is more disturbing in the underlying dialectic is the disparagement of any form of al? terity.Herder dismisses black people and native Americans as underdeveloped, while Lavater assumes that the eyes of the Chinese are indicative of indulgence, voluptuousness , and sloth. With a confusing display of apparent objectivity, Lavater's carefully executed sketches of black people reveal them to be 'geil, diebisch, rachgierig, Liigner und Schmeichler'. Marjanne E. Gooze concentrates on the figure of the 'beautiful Jewess' and shows how anti-Semitic attempts to feminize the Jewish male leave little or no room forwomen, with the result that the term 'schone Jiidin' is applied to those who convert to Christianity out of selfless love for a Teutonic husband. Matters are not helped much by assurances that, at the turn of the nineteenth century at least, such classifications served to introduce a pro-German idealism rather than to attack what was easily perceived as alien. Women, too, were ultimately viewed as forming a foreign continent rather than as potential partners. Many authors were torn between mystifying their angelic in? nocence and simultaneously recoiling before the seductive dangers exuded by their bodies. It is no exaggeration to say that women were commonly viewed as incarnations of sexuality while being expected to behave with a level of restraint that few men would wish to impose on themselves. The attentive reader is here given ample oppor? tunityto decide how much, or little,things have changed during the last two centuries. University of Kent Osman Durrani ...