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Book Reviews Lange, Victor, Das klassische Zeitalter der deutschen Literatur 1740-1815. Munich: Winkler, 1983. The chosen dates of Victor Lange's book (this is a competent translation by Wilhelm Hock of the English text published in 1982, which could not be obtained for this review) already imply an intention. Frederick the Great's accession and the post-Napoleonic Restoration mark beginning and end of a broadly understood "Enlightenment" and its social influence in Germany. It is one of the consequences of the debate which began in the sixties over the relation of the plant "literature" to the soil of history that the inwardlooking categories drawn from literature itself—the compact period, the great author's life-dates—have increasingly yielded to the more unquestionable patterns of history at large. (Gerhard Schulz's excellent volume in the de Boor-Newald Literary History is another recent example.) Lange's introduction expands on the reasons that justify this changeover, and states a view of literary works as "nicht etwa nur Äußerungen der geistigen Agilität oder der privaten Artikulation, sondern unerläßliche Erkenntnis- und Urteilsmodelle für das folgenreiche Funktionieren des Bürgers" (p. 18). This is not just a matter of an "objectively" perceived role, but of the "unmittelbare Überlegung" of Goethe, who directed his works consciously at a nobility which he respected but whose limitations he clearly saw; or of Schiller, who advocated freedom "in ihrer kategorischsten Form" (p. 19 f); and if Herder came to oppose the two Weimar "preceptors," it was because for him they had betrayed the logic of historical progress towards a "menschliche Gesellschaft aufgeklärter Bürger" (p. 21). Even Fichte's idealism and Schelling's naturephilosophy are presented as having the prime aim, "einer künftigen Gesellschaft Sinn und Richtung zu geben" (p. 21). This may seem to overstate the directness of Goethe's and Schiller's project and the relevance of Fichte's and Schelling's. But the overstatement stimulates sympathetic expectations; it would be a major achievement to fulfill them with precise and substantial demonstration. The chapter headings which articulate the thesis promise to do that: "Der öffentliche Gebrauch der Vernunft," with "Was ist Aufklärung?" prominent among its sub-headings; "Gegenforderungen der Imagination," with "Sturm und Drang" drama and "Angriffe gegen feudale Mißstände" among its topics; a chapter "Der ganze Mensch" which embraces "Schiller: Kunst und gesellschaftliches Handeln" and "Das wichtigste Ereignis in Europa." And so on down to a final chapter "Gesellschaft im Umbruch" 214 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA which—provocatively—has Faust as its last sub-section. AU this promises a coherent account of the eighteenth-century dialectic between literature and ideas on the one hand, as agents of change, and the inertial forces of the social order on the other. The promise, it must regretfully be said, is fulfilled only in the most modest degree. No grand strategy connects the chapters, beyond what the reader may infer from their sequence and make good from his own knowledge. The individual sub-sections are unpurposive. They assemble separate points and refer to various works, but achieve no coherence or insight. The result is literary history in a sad old sense: description, enumeration, juxtaposition, but with none of the sinews of argument. For example, the sub-section "Was ist Aufklätung?" might have been expected to analyse Kant's famous declaration, perhaps linking it with other evidence of the widespread faith in the primacy of reason (e.g. Lessing's theological writings) and giving some sense of the institutional problems that faced a would-be social rationality, even in a relatively enlightened absolutist state like Frederick's Prussia. The tactics of flattery and reassurance in Kant's essay would have been an ideal lead-in. But Lange does not venture far into the essay. It figures in one paragraph, with minimal quotation. The problems—Kant's, Reason's, Prussia's—stay unprobed. Next come some titles and pieces of information about Mendelssohn, JJ. Engel, Sulzer and aesthetics, the Mittwochsgesellschaft, Wezel and Moser, the standard of living under Frederick, and the King's antipathy to Shakespeare and German writing. Numerous works are mentioned, none analysed. The basis of...

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