Goethe

By Peter Boerner

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was an exceptionally prolific and versatile writer.  As a student, he composed pastoral plays in the style of the waning Rococo. With Götz von Berlichingen, a drama conceived in the spirit of Shakespeare, he joined the avant-garde ‘Storm and Stress’ authors.  When he was twenty-five, he wrote the epistolary novel Sorrows of Young Werther, eliciting fervent responses among those who rejected the traditions of the Enlightenment.  In his tragedy Faust, which evolved over a sixty-year period, he created a prototype of the Romantic hero. 

Peter Boerner was born in Estonia and educated in Germany.  He edited a paperback selection of Goethe’s works in 45 volumes, and has published extensively in the fields of Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies.  He taught in the United States for thirty years, most recently at Indiana University. 

Contents: Goethe on Himself - Childhood and Youth - Student Years -Storm and Stress - The First Decade in Weimar - Italian Journey -Evolution, not Revolution - Friendship with Schiller - The Napoleonic Years - Citizen of the World - Faust - Notes - Chronology - Testimonies- Further Reading - Index