Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T20:20:29.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Faust's Mountains: An Ecocritical Reading of Goethe's Tragedy and Science

from Part I - First Forays: Mountain Exploration and Celebration from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Heather I. Sullivan
Affiliation:
Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas
Sean Ireton
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
Caroline Schaumann
Affiliation:
Emory University
Get access

Summary

Ecocriticism's environmental perspective views human beings, bodies, and culture as participants in ecological interactions and exchanges with the rest of the energetic and material world, including both biotic and abiotic forms. This ecocritical essay assesses how Goethe portrays Faust's mountain experiences in both part I and part II (1808, 1832) of the tragedy as engagements with physical matter rather than with spiritual inspiration. Indeed, by using ecocriticism to study Goethe's science as the context for the play, we see that Faust's many mountains are more than a setting; they actively destabilize his — and our — assumptions about “passive matter” and recontextualize human endeavors in their physical environment. Faust's mountains inspire the desire to “ascend,” but they also offer a glimpse into the massive geological changes occurring through deep time even as they radically alter the climatic systems of the biosphere on a daily basis. In other words, scientists in the Age of Goethe recognized that the apparent solidity of mountains is actually a short-term illusion; mountains instead embody and enact climatic and geological flows in which we human beings are not the only active forces. Goethe's Faust documents such issues, though this is often overlooked in readings celebrating human ingenuity and action as the supreme, spiritual, and/or modern force shaping our world for the “better,” regardless of so-called “collateral damage” such as murder, colonialism, piracy, and the final putrid swamp. In contrast, viewing the tragedy through ecocriticism and Goethe's science offers a possible environmental stance acknowledging humanity's position within these many physical processes rather than as transcendental beings who dominate at whim and without long-term costs.

Type
Chapter
Information
Heights of Reflection
Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century
, pp. 116 - 133
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×