Torquato Tasso
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Jackson, Andrew (2015) Goethe and the nobility as characterisation and presentation of self. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6964/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Goethe and the Nobility as Characterisation and Presentation of Self Andrew Jackson, MA, BA Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Modern Languages and Cultures College of Arts University of Glasgow February 2015 Abstract Goethe had a complex and evolving relationship with the nobility, for reasons which can in part be inferred from his biography. This thesis, however, is primarily concerned with examination of relevant texts, and is largely confined to the years before the journey to Italy in 1786. The first three chapters cover the period before his arrival in Weimar. This is followed by an account of the relevant works from the first Weimar decade (1775-1786), with some biographical detail. The main weight has fallen on Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung, a text which is still sometimes undervalued, and has a rather limited bibliography. It is naturally a more direct reflection of his social attitudes than the three major plays associated with the decade, which however have been given separate, more cursory treatments in the three final chapters. General themes include the emergence of Goethe from immature, or at least inherited, stereotypes of the nobility, first towards an attempted alliance between it and the ‗Genie‘ of the Sturm und Drang, and then to a more detailed critique made possible by personal experience. The final phase (final, that is, within the limited time frame) was the formation and development of an internal ideal of nobility with an increasingly tenuous relationship with social and political reality. Goethe‘s picture of nobility as performance and presentation of self is considered, and its links, for the non-noble author, with theatre and theatrical role performance. Other recurring themes include court manners and their value, both inherently and as an analogue of the heightening which for Goethe was essential to art, court life as a paradigm of social life in general, and the related subject of flight from society. 2 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 2 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................. 4 Author‘s Declaration .............................................................................................................. 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 6 Chapter 1: Goethe before Werther ....................................................................................... 22 Chapter 2: Werther in the great world.................................................................................. 40 Chapter 3: From Werther to the court at Weimar ................................................................ 67 Chapter 4: Weimar: The mutual impact ............................................................................... 89 Chapter 5: Obligations of nobility: ‗Das Göttliche‘ ........................................................... 110 Chapter 6: ‗Actions that a man might play‘: Wilhelm Meister and his mission ................ 121 Chapter 7: Iphigenie auf Tauris ......................................................................................... 162 Chapter 8: Egmont.............................................................................................................. 171 Chapter 9: Torquato Tasso ................................................................................................. 179 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 189 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 198 3 Acknowledgments My thanks are due above all to Professors Paul Bishop and Thomas Munck, who have been in different ways ideal supervisors. This project has changed direction more than once, and might have been expected to try their patience by the production of text which was submitted to them for comment and which I subsequently decided to discard. Glasgow University Library is unusually well stocked for this subject, and the staff have been very helpful in obtaining material from elsewhere, and in other ways. Use has also been made of the facilities of the National Library of Scotland. I am grateful to those who at different times have taught German to an unusually mature student, especially to Martina Elfeld, and to my wife for her support. 4 Author’s Declaration I declare that, except where explicit reference is made to the contribution of others, this thesis is the result of my own work and has not been submitted for any other degree at the University of Glasgow or any other institution. Signature .................................................. A. M. Jackson 5 Introduction This thesis will investigate aspects of the young Goethe‘s views and assumptions on the nobility, and on the interface between it and a lower social group which was rising in self- confidence and coming to challenge the nobility in certain limited areas. It began as a study of the nobility in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (hereafter WML), and in particular of its relationship with theatre, self-presentation and self-development. The discovery of a classic of Goethe scholarship,1 now almost forty years old but on precisely this topic, soon led to a change of plan, and to an investigation of how far these themes can be traced in Goethe‘s earlier works. The original concept, however, still partly explains the overall approach. One obvious difficulty is the extraordinary diversity of the early works, and their apparent inconsistency if viewed as a totality. The nobility can be characterised both by inauthentic semblance and performance, as opposed to bourgeois reality and authenticity (seeming as opposed to being), and at the same time can by implication be set before us as models for upward ethical striving. Again, Goethe sometimes presents us with idealised, or at least entirely positive individual members of the Adel, but refuses to endorse it as a whole. This applies most obviously to Werther and WMTS. Elsewhere, however, nobility as such seems to be celebrated, sometimes with an equivocation between social and morally approbative senses of the word ‗noble‘. In particular, on the interpretation of ‗Das Göttliche‘ given below (Chapter 5), we are offered as role models ‗noble ones‘, who seem to be partly a moralistic thought experiment, but partly also social reality. Imitation of them will enable us to rise ethically, the enlarged perspective given by this will in turn enable us to form and refine a higher ideal for our further aspiration, and so on indefinitely. Any society characterised by an aristocratic ruling class is likely to produce middle-class artists and intellectuals in a complex relationship with it. The normal unstable compound of respect, deference and resentment may be further complicated by elements of social aspiration, even of identification. Certain superiorities will tend to be attributed to the nobility, which will reinforce social and political subordination, but which are also available to us in part for emulation, although only on certain conditions. One condition is 1 Dieter Borchmeyer, Höfische Gesellschaft und französische Revolution bei Goethe: Adliges und bürgerliches Wertsystem im Urteil der Weimarer Klassik (Kronberg/Ts: Athenäum, 1977). As the title suggests, Borchmeyer‟s texts postdate the Revolution. The only work in common with what follows is Torquato Tasso, allowing for the overlap between Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (hereafter WMTS) and WML. 6 naturally that members of the nobility do not themselves fall away from these standards, and in Goethe‘s case anxieties about this are expressed sometimes by powerful elements of satire, sometimes more directly by Fürstenermahnung. Another condition is that these virtues should be publicly performed, rather than restricted to the privacy of an inner circle. This is one of the links between nobility and theatre, and both flight from society and the performance or otherwise of social duties by those in socially elevated situations will emerge as themes in what follows. If we ask what virtues Goethe attributes to the nobility, some at least can be specified. They include a learned tropism towards decision-making and action, as opposed to the over-elaborate bourgeois consciousnesses of Werther and Wilhelm Meister; a willingness