Goethe's Families of the Heart

ISBN-13: 9781501336072 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 208 str.

Susan E. Gustafson

Opis

An analysis of all the radical love relationships (heterosexual, same-sex, bisexual, biological, and adoptive) that Goethe portrays throughout his literary works.

Recenzje

Susan Gustafson's central thesis is attractive and persuasive ... This book offers a good deal of illumination. Modern Language Review

Spis treści

Introduction Chapter 1: Same-Sex, Nonexclusive, and Adoptive Affinities in Goethe's WahlverwandtschaftenChapter 2: Same-sex Affinities Between Women and Family Redefinitions in Goethe's StellaChapter 3: Learning What Family and Love can be in Wilhelm Meisters LehrjahreChapter 4: Asserting and Affirming All Elective Affinities in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre ConclusionBibliographyIndex

O autorze

Susan E. Gustafson is Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor of German Studies at the University of Rochester, USA. Her areas of research include 18th-20th-century German literature, aesthetic theory, conceptions of families, gender studies, psychoanalysis, and feminism. She is the author of Absent Mothers and Orphaned Fathers: Narcissism and Abjection in Lessing's Aesthetic Production (1995) and Men Desiring Men: The Poetry of Same-Sex Identity and Desire in German Classicism (2002). Gustafson demonstrates that Goethe's conception of the elective affinities is certainly not limited to heterosexual spouses or occasionally to men desiring men. A close analysis of Goethe's explication of affinities throughout his literary production reveals his rejection of loveless relationships (for example, arranged marriages) and his acceptance and promotion of all relationships formed through spontaneous affinities and love (including heterosexual, same-sex, nonexclusive, group, parental, and adoptive).