Karl Philipp Moritz und das 18. Jahrhundert. Bestandsaufnahmen-Korrekturen-Neuansätze (review)

Goethe Yearbook 415 taken by Catriona MacLeod, who compares the representation of androgyny and homosexuality in the works of Winckelmann, Friedrich Schlegel, and Kleist, while a final group of contributors chooses to look at broader social patterns such as "homosocial networking in the eighteenth century" (Simon Richter), "psy fi explorations of out space" in the wake of Goethe's Werther (Laurence A. Rickels), or "gender dissonance and women's passionate friendships" (Susanne T Kord). Almost all of the contributions, however, focus on male writers, men, the construction of masculinity, homosociality, and male homosexuality, with only passing reference to women writers or historical manifestations of lesbianism. Although Kord's article provides an impressive overview of women's same-sex relationships around 1800, as well as critical categories for identifying coded signifiers, it seems hard to believe that only one contribution could be found on this topic. Since limitations of space preclude my going into the individual essays in more detail, I refer the interested reader to Kuzniar's introduction, while recommending the volume as a whole to scholars in eighteenth-century studies: the readings collected here are much too intelligent and original to ignore, and they will challenge the reader to look at familiar authors and texts in a new light. University of Massachusetts, Amherst Susan L. Cocalis Martin Fontius and Anneliese Klingenberg, eds., Karl Philipp Moritz und das 18. Jahrhundert. Bestandsaufnahmen—Korrekturen— Neuansätze. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995.x + 280 pp. Karl Philipp Moritz is and has been many things to many different people. For Germanists he was the author of Anton Reiser, the first psychological novel.The allegorical Hartknopf novels received scant attention. The Schrimpf edition of the aesthetic writings and Thomas P Saine's account of Moritz's ästhetische Theodizee placed the evocative if perplexing essay Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen into prominence. Todorov's decision to speak about Moritz in connection with his Theories of the Symbol probably did more than anything else to call non-Germanist attention to Moritz. Of late it has been the reissue of the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde that has claimed scholarly interest; this development is not surprising given the recent interest in the connections between literature and anthropology, not to mention sexuality, gender and the body. 4l6 Book Reviews The stated intention of the international conference devoted to Karl Philipp Moritz und das 18. Jahrhundert: Bestandsaufnahmen— Korrek-turen—Neuansätze, available as a volume of proceedings, was to bring together literary scholars, linguists, art historians, classicists, pedagogues, philosophers and historians of medicine in order to render the dense and multifaceted discursive web that makes up Moritz's work. Despite the overwhelming response, the conference organizers soon realized that things had little changed. An abundance of proposals were submitted for Reiser, aesthetics, and the Magazin; stirring up presenters for the lesser known works proved more challenging. It is therefore not surprising that the most urgent recommendation of the volume's editor and the first four contributions , all devoted to the state of Moritz scholarship, is that steps be taken to produce an authoritative edition of Moritz's works. Scholars ' knowledge of Moritz tends to be fragmentary, not based on a thorough acquaintance with all of Moritz's multifarious endeavors. Precisely what kind of edition remains an open question, though Heide Hollmer gives it a stab in her essay "Ein Klassiker ohne Text." Future editors will have to take into account the virtual absence of manuscripts and Nachlaß. Annaliese Klingenberg calls attention to numerous items published by Moritz that are bound to extend and modify our understanding of him. They include his efforts to explain grammar and the operations of language (especially to -women), significant translations of English novels (many by women authors), journalistic writings and those written in his capacity as member of the two Berlin academies. The se disparate texts, however, with their occasionally uncertain or compromised authorship, are bound to cause future editors headaches. In responding to the difficulties posed and solutions suggested by Hollmer and Klingenberg, Dorothea Bock resorts to the concept of the "Zwischengeist," a term coined by Jean Paul with specific reference to Moritz. She quotes from the Vorschule zur Ästhetik: "Unter den Dichtern...