A01=Arnd Bohm
Author_Arnd Bohm
Category=DSB
Category=DSG
Cheating the gods
Elasticity
Epic
Epic poem
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Faust legends
German hero
Goethe
Good versus evil
Helen of Troy
Knowledge
Love story
Mephistopheles
Trojans' mistake
Product details
- ISBN 9781571133441
- Weight: 598g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Feb 2007
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A reassessment of genre that fills a major gap in Goethe's oeuvre and initiates a radically new reading of Faust.
Goethe has long been enshrined as the greatest German poet, but his admirers have always been uneasy with the idea that he did not produce a great epic poem. A master in all the other genres and modes, it has been felt, should have done so. Arnd Bohm proposes that Goethe did compose an epic poem, which has been hidden in plain view: Faust. Goethe saw that the Faust legends provided the stuff for a national epic: a German hero, a villain (Mephistopheles), a quest (to know all things), a sublime conflict (good versus evil), a love story (via Helen of Troy), and elasticity (all human knowledge could be accommodated by the plot). Bohm reveals the care with which Goethe draws upon such sources as Tasso, Ariosto, Dante, and Vergil. In the microcosm of the "Auerbachs Keller" episode Faust has the opportunity to find "what holds the world together in its essence" and to end his quest happily, but he fails. He forgets the future because he cannot remember what epic teaches. His course ends tragically, bringing him back to the origin of epic, as he replicates the Trojans' mistake of presuming to cheat the gods.
Arnd Bohm isAssociate Professor of English at Carleton University, Ottawa.
Arnd Bohm is Associate Professor in the Department of German at Carleton University.
