[DOWNLOAD] "German Epic / Jewish Epic: Goethe's Exodus Narrative in Hermann Und Dorothea and "Israel in Der Wuste"." by The German Quarterly " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: German Epic / Jewish Epic: Goethe's Exodus Narrative in Hermann Und Dorothea and "Israel in Der Wuste".
- Author : The German Quarterly
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 241 KB
Description
Goethe drafted his essay of biblical criticism "Israel in der Wuste" more than two decades prior to its first publication in 1819 as supplementary material to his Divan. When resituated in its primary compositional context in 1797, the essay can be read as a companion piece to his verse epic Hermann und Dorothea. Both works are driven by a conception of national epic and both take the biblical Exodus from Egypt as a paradigm of such a founding cultural narrative. Yet they appropriate this biblical material in the service of vastly different visions of nation. Hermann und Dorothea employs its Exodus analogy to suggest the possibility of an integrative, adaptive modern German cultural consciousness, while "Israelin der Wuste" finds in the Exodus story a highly negative prefiguration of a volatile modern Judaism. Taken together, they illuminate the dynamic of rejection and dependence at work in Goethe's relationship to Judaism. **********