Zu Hermeneutik, Literaturkritik und Sprachtheorie. Gesammelte Vorträge, Beiträge und Essays. On Hermeneutics, Theory of Literature and Language. Collected Essays, Lectures and Papers by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (review)

In his preface, Paul Corley describes this collection of essays and lectures by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer as a companion volume to Transatlantic Crossings and Transformations (2015) [ed. note: see review in Monatshefte 108.3, Fall 2016, 423–25]. He states that the latter "present[ed] for the first time a comprehensive view of the momentous process of German-American cultural transfer […] during the 18^th and 19^th centuries." The volume under review, he continues, "takes up as overarching themes the nature and role of language in human life and art, the relationship between language and understanding, and the role of imagination in creating and linking language and poetry" (7).

As in the case of Transatlantic Crossings, this group of essays is a mix of German- and English-language texts: of the 18 individual chapters, seven are in English and the rest in German. As far as I can tell, only Chapter Nine, whose subtitle is "Zur Hermeneutik Hegels, Gadamers und Humboldts," and the brief Anhang on translation as a philosophical problem have neither appeared previously nor been presented as a lecture. One could therefore wonder why the publication of this book should even be undertaken. However, the various chapters first appeared in 16 different journals, collections, and Festschriften, and over a period of more than thirty years—1970 to 2002, or longer, if one includes the unpublished Anhang dated 2011. Thus, the volume serves to bring together a number of scholarly contributions by one of the great figures in American German studies and philosophy, which might otherwise be difficult to assemble. The individual chapters are presented in chronological order, therefore allowing the reader to follow in them the development of Mueller-Vollmer's interests and work.

Mueller-Vollmer highlights the role played by a long list of writers and philosophers in the development of language, interpretation, and translation theories, as well as the place of phenomenology and hermeneutics in literary theory. He includes Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Novalis, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, and Anne Germaine de Staël, as well as more modern writers such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Roman Ingarden, and many more. Unfortunately, since the volume includes no index, one can easily get lost when attempting to pull together information concerning a particular person or topic; and it is furthermore not helpful that there is no bibliography. To be sure, Mueller-Vollmer's extensive footnotes and the English-language abstracts that head each chapter go a long way toward remedying the situation; but it is frustrating that his occasional reference to further work that appeared after he had completed a particular manuscript, while seeming to suggest that he is pointing toward recent scholarship, fails to bring his readers up to date. Chapter Eight, for example, which first appeared in 1983, includes a footnote stating the manuscript was completed in the summer of 1979 and therefore could not take into consideration several contributions that appeared later in that same year! (173) And nothing is included that was published thereafter.

As is customary with all of Mueller-Vollmer's work, each chapter represents sound, solid, and compact scholarship, and each could potentially have become an entire volume in the bookshelf of another writer. This collection is to be recommended for any institutional or private library as a welcome addition to its resources.