Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- Ossian-Rezeption von Michael Denis bis Goethe: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Primitivismus in Deutschland
- Werther, the Undead
- Who Is the Editor in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers?
- Substitution, Self-blame, and Self-deception in Goethe's Stella: Ein Schauspiel für Liebende
- “Myth and Psychology”: The Curing of Orest in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris
- Poetic Intentions and Musical Production: “Die erste Walpurgisnacht”
- Dichter, Herrscher, Natur: Die Entstehung des Ilmparks und das Bild des Parks in Goethes Dichtung
- Goethe, Rousseau, the Novel, and the Origins of Psychoanalysis
- Trauma and Memory in the Wahlverwandschaften
- Ein anderes Gretchen-Abenteuer: Das Ende der rhetorischen Poesiekonzeption und das fünfte Buch von Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit
- Speech, Writing, and Identity in the West-Östlicher Divan
- Die Pforte entriegeln: Goethes “Urworte Orphisch”
- “Laß mich hören, laß mich fühlen”: Johann Sebastian Bach im Urteil Goethes
- Schiller the Killer: Wilhelm Tell and the Decriminalization of Murder
- Disciplining History: Schiller als Historiograph
- “Heiliger Goethe, bitt' für mich”: Friedrich Spielhagen and the Anxiety of Influence
- Goethes kleiner Vetter: Erinnerung an den Frankfurter Abenteurer Johann Konrad Friedrich
- In Memoriam, Jill Anne Kowalik (1949–2003)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book 8, Chapter 11: In Memoriam, Richard I. Brod (1933–2004)
- Book Reviews
Trauma and Memory in the Wahlverwandschaften
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- Ossian-Rezeption von Michael Denis bis Goethe: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Primitivismus in Deutschland
- Werther, the Undead
- Who Is the Editor in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers?
- Substitution, Self-blame, and Self-deception in Goethe's Stella: Ein Schauspiel für Liebende
- “Myth and Psychology”: The Curing of Orest in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris
- Poetic Intentions and Musical Production: “Die erste Walpurgisnacht”
- Dichter, Herrscher, Natur: Die Entstehung des Ilmparks und das Bild des Parks in Goethes Dichtung
- Goethe, Rousseau, the Novel, and the Origins of Psychoanalysis
- Trauma and Memory in the Wahlverwandschaften
- Ein anderes Gretchen-Abenteuer: Das Ende der rhetorischen Poesiekonzeption und das fünfte Buch von Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit
- Speech, Writing, and Identity in the West-Östlicher Divan
- Die Pforte entriegeln: Goethes “Urworte Orphisch”
- “Laß mich hören, laß mich fühlen”: Johann Sebastian Bach im Urteil Goethes
- Schiller the Killer: Wilhelm Tell and the Decriminalization of Murder
- Disciplining History: Schiller als Historiograph
- “Heiliger Goethe, bitt' für mich”: Friedrich Spielhagen and the Anxiety of Influence
- Goethes kleiner Vetter: Erinnerung an den Frankfurter Abenteurer Johann Konrad Friedrich
- In Memoriam, Jill Anne Kowalik (1949–2003)
- Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book 8, Chapter 11: In Memoriam, Richard I. Brod (1933–2004)
- Book Reviews
Summary
Dedicated to Ursula R. Mahlendorf
IN THIS ESSAY I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS Goethe'sconsiderable insight into the dynamic of trauma and memory, and the social-historical critique that his work offers us. I will concentrate on the Wahlverwandtschaften with the hope that my remarks will shed new light on some of the notoriously difficult structural features of this novel.
Among the most traumatized figures in Goethe's oeuvre, namely Mignon, Natalie, and Ottilie, we find that the most seriously damaged of these three is Mignon, whose early childhood of abuse and neglect has been carefully analyzed by Ursula R. Mahlendorf in her seminal essay “The Mystery of Mignon: Object Relations, Abandonment, Child Abuse and Narrative Structure,” which appeared in the 1994 edition of the Goethe Yearbook. I will therefore not recapitulate an argument that has already been made, but I do want to reiterate two points from this important study as a prologue of sorts to my own discussion. Distinguishing between story and plot, Mahlendorf points out:
The strategy of plot narration allows none of the persons involved in Mignon's life-history access to her whole story, but rather all of them, at considerable intervals, add their fragment—Wilhelm, Natalie, the physician, the Abbé, and finally her uncle, the Marchese, who in turn tells of her grandfather's, her mother'sand her father's relationships. The fragmentation of Mignon's life history by this plot strategy formally renders and communicates to the reader Mignon's own experience of life, which is as discontinuous as the reader's experience of the narrative.
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- Information
- Goethe Yearbook 12 , pp. 129 - 140Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004