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Goethe Yearbook 283 Vaget's "EUi reicher Baron: Zum sozialgeschichtüchen Gehalt der Wahlverwandtschaften " from 1980 (mentioned in the bibUography) and especiaUy David WeUbery's bold and groundbreaking interpretation "Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809): Desorganisation symboUscher Ordnungen" from 1985, which is not listed. This timely volume fuUy achieves the intentions of the series' editors to inform a wide readership about the Uterary scholarship and criticism on a major work and, given the continued popularity oÃ- Die Wahlverwandtschaften (several courses currently offered at German and US universities are designed around the critical reception of the novel), wUl be a most useful resource. Swarthmore College Hansjakob Werten Paul E. Kerry, EnUghtenment Thought in the Writings of Goethe: A Contribution to the History of Ideas. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001. χ + 243 pp. The reader coming to a book bearing the title "EnUghtenment Thought in the Writings of Goethe" Geaving aside what is in some ways the even more ambitious subtitle) and who finds that it consists of a single, rather slim volume may reasonably conclude that one of two things must be true: either this is a writer whose abUity to synthesize large amounts of disparate and difficult material can stand comparison with that of, say, a Cassirer, an Auerbach, or a Berlin; or, alternatively, there is a certain disconnect here between the book's title and its contents. Unfortunately (though perhaps not altogether surprisingly), the latter is the case. Whatever else one might want to say about the Enlightenment, few would deny that its manifestations pretty weU cover the range of human cultural activity : philosophy, Uterature, criticism, phüology, poUtical theory, history, economics , the fine arts, the natural sciences, and aU the myriad subdivisions and overlaps which these categories aUow. SimUarly, comparatively Uttle famiUarity with Goethe is required to recognize that there are few if any of these same areas that did not faU within the orbit of his interests and almost as few to which he did not contribute in some important way. Thus there would appear prima facie to be good reason to suppose that an adequate treatment of "Enlightenment Thought in the Writings of Goethe" would have to be a rather large work Uideed. It turns out, however, that for purposes of this study what Kerry means by the term 'EnUghtenment thought' is something quite a bit more limited. In a word, he means simply the "idea of tolerance" (2). Kerry's Goethe "beat the drum of tolerance in Germany" and did so "decade after decade until his death"; this was, we are told, an "overriding concern in Goethe's writings"; he is seen as "stand[ing] in a long line of distinguished forebears . . . who wrote novels, dramas, and essays to provoke and entertain, and by doing so to help audiences and the reading pubUc to entertain new, enUghtened ideas" (2). Now, I suspect there may be more than a few readers to whom the image of Goethe as propagandist for popular edification wUl seem rather alien. I am certainly among them. Kerry acknowledges that his approach may not be in aU respects an entirely satisfactory one, noting that "tolerance cannot be claimed as an overriding interest in aU of the pieces here studied," and adding that "focusing narrowly on any aspect of Goethe's writings flattens them somewhat " (14). One might wish that this caution had been taken a bit more to heart. Yet Kerry is also confident that "an examination of [the] role [of tolerance in Goethe's writings] . . . reveals new dimensions in them" (14). At least on the strength of what is presented here, however, I remain generaUy unconvinced. 284 Book Reviews Even aUowing for the restriction of "Enlightenment thought" to one portion of the whole, Kerry has surely attempted to take on more in this study than was prudent. The exposition proper is divided into eleven chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion, for a total of sUghtly more than two hundred pages of text. Add to this the consideration that the list of works discussed includes Werther , Iphigenie, Egmont, both the Divan itsetf and the commentary Besserem Verständniss, and the Wanderjahre, along with several smaUer pieces (among them the Sankt-Rochus-Fest zu Bingen), and...

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