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Sprachskepsis und Poetologie
Goethes Romane ‚Die Wahlverwandtschaften‘ und ‚Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre‘
von Christian MittermüllerIn his late novels, Goethe formulates a profound critique of language and thus challenges his own capacity to represent. Goethe’s fundamental scepticism about language derives from an irresolvable ambiguity of words coupled with limitations on their expressiveness; in the case of Elective Affinities and Journeyman Years this leads to the conception of an open work of art. Using detailed textual analysis, Christian Mittermüller reconstructs a hitherto scarcely recognised connection between scepticism about language and poetic theory, and in so doing opens up a new avenue for approaching Goethe’s late works.