Goethe (Life & Times) - Softcover

Boerner, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908323515 ISBN 13: 9781908323514

Publisher: Haus Publishing, 2015

Synopsis

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was one of the greatest thinkers of the modern age: a world-famous writer, scientist, and statesman, his influence was already far-reaching during his lifetime, and his literary and intellectual legacy continues to reverberate throughout contemporary culture. In this book, newly updated, Peter Boerner, a highly respected authority on Goethe, presents the definitive short biography of this extraordinary figure.

An exceptionally prolific and versatile writer, Goethe produced important works covering a range of genres. As a young man, he composed pastoral plays in the style of the waning Rococco, was an early proponent of the avant-garde Sturm und Drang movement, and became a literary superstar with The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which a young man’s unrequited love culminates in tragedy. In his classic play Faust, which evolved over a sixty-year period, he created one of the best-known versions of the legend and introduced the prototype of the romantic hero. A scientist active in various fields, including botany and the theory of colors, Goethe also pondered issues of evolution well before Darwin. In Boerner’s illustrated biography, Goethe’s impressive oeuvre comes to vibrant life.

A major contribution to the English-language literature on Goethe, this is a beautiful and accessible introduction to one of history’s foremost geniuses.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Boerner is professor emeritus of Germanic studies, comparative literature, and West European studies at Indiana University–Bloomington. He was a curator at the Goethe Museum in Düsseldorf and has edited a paperback collection of Goethe’s work in forty-five volumes. Nancy Boerner served as a collection development librarian for Germanic, French, and Italian languages and literatures at Indiana University–Bloomington’s Well’s Library and has translated multiple scholarly publications.

Review:

“An invitingly colorful and compact volume. . . . The newcomer to Goethe will leave Boerner’s book with a clear impression of Goethe’s personality and of the scope of his work.”
(Open Letters Monthly)

About this edition

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1908323515
• ISBN 13: 9781908323514
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198