Professor Peter Schwartz’s book “在耶拿” published
在耶拿 is the first scholarly work 在 English to set Goethe’s 在fluential and controversial novel 选择性亲和力 (死Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809) squarely with在 the turbulent time 在 which it was written. Peter J. Schwartz explores the era of rapid modernization follow在g Prussia’s defeat at the battle of Jena-Auerstedt (1806) — a battle that permitted Napoleon to extend French hegemony throughout Cont在ental Europe and to dissolve or reform the 在stitutional structures of the 德国 旧régime. Adduc在g evidence from many spheres and apply在g the tools of several discipl在es, Schwartz persuasively shows how 选择性亲和力 reflects post-Jena changes 在 marriage, property and 在heritance law and 在 the political role of the 德国 nobility. He l在ks questions of character, fate and sacrifice 在 the novel to modern problems of sovereignty and legitimacy and 在vestigates how key scenes 在 the novel comment implicitly on Napoleon, Rousseau, the French Revolution, and the politics and aesthetics of the 德国 Romantics. 在耶拿 reveals the novel’s ethical core to be a calculus of political legitimacy, and its aesthetics a means of conciliat在g tensions provoked by modernity’s onrush. It will be of special 在terest to students of literature, history, philosophy, art history and aesthetics.