This dissertation will undertake to determine the role and concept of experience in the development of the title character of Johann Wolfgang Goethes novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Given the novels traditional status in German literary criticism as an (in some sense) exemplary Bildungsroman, the psychic development of Wilhelm Meister will be scrutinized especially insofar as it represents a model of the formation of modern human consciousness. I point to the distinction that the novel makes between the objective experiences that Wilhelm lacks and the subjective experiences that contribute to the formation of his personality: the biography or Lehrjahre of which the Tower Society finally includes in its pedagogical archive. Turning to critical reception of the secret Society of the Tower, I undertake to outline the scope and character of its interests, in order to explicate the interpretation that its humanistic pedagogy and liberal social agenda give to Wilhelms individual life and development. In the light shed more recently on the turn of the nineteenth century as a watershed of aesthetic humanism and its ideal of free humanity, I stress how erotic love changes in the modern social context of the novel from a binding moral relation to a subjective aesthetic experience that constitutes self-consciousness. The erotic Abenteuer or adventures of Lothario are identified both 1) as the Towers humanistic standard of healthy formative experience, and 2) as an anticipation of the nineteenth-century neologism, Erlebnis. Finally, love as adventure or Erlebnis will be situated within the psychological landscape of Wilhelms modern consciousness, so as to determine the reasons for his growing immunity to guilt, grief, and other negative psychic experiences, once he has been introduced into the modern Society of the Tower and has absorbed its humanistic ideology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-04232005-033746 |
| Date | 24 April 2005 |
| Creators | Holman, Donald Wood |
| Contributors | Prof. David C. Wood, Prof. Christoph Zeller, Prof. William P. Franke, Prof. Robert F. Barsky |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-04232005-033746/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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