Goethe's Modernisms

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"In this engaging book Astrida Tantillo performs a double explication. She traces the tension between motion and balance in the work of Goethe, and she extracts from Goethe's texts important lessons for the problems - political, commercial, educational - we face as moderns. A fascinating study." -- Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law, Florida International University, USA
"This book pleads eloquently for a Goethe still relevant to thinking about the problems facing contemporary American culture--because he provides such 'excellent background to explore the American ideological and cultural divide'. As she deftly weaves together readings of Goethe's major works with the tensions in American culture around issues like the economy, religion, teacher versus student-centered education, and whether grammar or the liberal arts are important, Tantillo shows that Goethe is not the conservative sage he is often taken for, but a prescient and incisive anthropologist of modern culture whose compensatory approach to analysis reveals the identical cultural formations that underlie modern American liberalism and conservatism, New Age spiritualism and Evangelicalism alike. Goethe's Modernisms offers wise, humane, and balanced readings not only of Goethe, but of the social and especially educational issues confronting our culture today." -- Jane K. Brown, Professor of Germanics and Comparative Literature, University of Washington, USA
Goethe's Modernisms is more than yet another book on a major author who continues to attracht readers. The staying power of Goethe's works is derivative of their mirroring of the complex contentiousness of what we regard as "modern" issues. Central to Astrida Orle Tantillo's inquiry is the question: to what degree do the advantages of applied science and of a democratic culture enervate one's own thoughtful spirituality and erode a sense of community The "modernisms" in the title refers to the multilayered quality of modernism as a whole. Tantillo addresses the concept of modernism from a scientific and business point of view. Along with the principles of compensation and equilibrium,Tantillo draws upon an understanding of American-style capitalism that has infiltrated all aspects of our social and intellectual lives. While at first blush the temporal and cultural distance between Goethe's era and our own might appear too great to be bridged easily, the distance quickly evaporates. In detailed and riveting analyses of three major works by GoetheWerther, Faust, Wilhelm Meistershe clearly marks her text with the experiences of the Bush-Rove years, the controversy occasioned by Lawrence Summers' proposal to export pollution to developing countries, the debate surrounding the No-Child-Left-Behind educational policy, the hope of national renewal with the Obama phenomenon, the renewed anti-intellectualism of mainstream America, and the continuing assault on the liberal arts. Technological advances and enhanced ease of communication have given rise to a lackluster culture of the middle, Tantillo argues. The canon has given way to the cannon; the space of quiet reflection has been undone by the screech of market criers. In contrast to the dominant public discourse that explicitly or implicitly views human development as part of a business plan, Tantillo argues that human growth should actually be about ethics. The purpose of human existence is to make inviduals capable of living a meaningful life; that is, one that serves others and not just the self. Human and national flourshing, Goethe taught, depends on principles that lend individual life stability without closing off growth and the possibility of achieving wisdom. Goethe's Modernisms is a resounding critique of the ills of cultural mediocrity in our age." -- John A. McCarthy, Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and European Studies, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA.
"In Goethe's Modernisms Astrida Tantillo offers a model of what literary scholarship should be: a challenging reinterpretation that fully situates Goethe in his historical circumstances while showing how he speaks eloquently to our present age of secular individualism." -- Professor Gerald Graff, Professor of Literature and Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
"An important tradition of American thinking, exemplified most forcefully by Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana, and Randall Jarrell, holds that the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe bear indispensable instruction on the nature of our modernity. In her new book, Astrida Orle Tantillo renews this American engagement with Goethe. Goethe's Modernisms is not only an original and insightful contribution to Goethe scholarship, but also a book of compelling advocacy on behalf of Goethe's relevance to the intractably complex challenges of the present. I believe it is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Goethe's impact on American thought." -- David E. Wellbery LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, Committee on Social Thought, and the College, University of Chicago, USA
"The word 'genius' may be overused, but we can have no doubts that it fits Pavel Florensky. He was a polymath of a kind that may seem almost impossible in the modern age. One of the brilliant school of young mathematicians who pushed at the boundaries of the subject at the beginning of the 20th century, he was convinced by his work on set theory and discontinuities that we live in a non-deterministic universe, and this faith led him not only in the direction of religion, but to becoming an Orthodox priest - a humble and devoted one. Yet his work in the natural sciences continued: in physics, electrodynamics, editing - after the Revolution - a large 'Technical Encyclopedia', and incredibly, when in exile and prison in the 1930's, continuing research on the natural resources of the Far East and north of Russia, while maintaining a copious correspondence. "But his work ranged far more widely even than that: into philosophy, theology, folklore and above all into the history and theory of art - he made ground-breaking studies, still of great importance, on 'reverse perspective' and on the iconostasis (while being on friendly terms with luminaries of the 'Modern Movement'). "A few of Florensky's works, chiefly on art, have been translated in the West; but he is scarcely well-known. Until Avril Pyman's volume we have lacked any biographical study - no doubt because such a protean figure is daunting for any specialist scholar. Fortunately Dr Pyman, after a lifetime's involvement with the intellectual history of the Russian 'Silver Age', and a deep knowledge of Russian Orthodoxy, is just the right person to tackle Florensky as the culminating project of her distinguished career. "Her book is not only supremely authoritative, but the fluent and accessible narrative of an extraordinary, perhaps saintly, life." -- Robin Milner-Gulland is Research Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Sussex, UK
"Goethe's Modernisms is a major scholarly achievement. It manages to make strikingly original contributions not just to the scholarship on Goethe, but also to our understanding of modernism, modernity, and contemporary Western culture. In beautifully wrought prose, Tantillo evokes modernity's dreams of progress, its melancholia over the loss of tradition, and Goethe's critical perspectives on both. Tantillo derives from her readings of Goethe incisive and utterly insightful commentary on some of the major socio-economic and cultural issues of our time, such as religion, commerce, and education. Goethe's Modernisms should be of major import to anyone teaching and learning in a liberal arts environment in America today." -- Imke Meyer, Imke Meyer, Professor of German & Chair, Bryn Mawr College, USA
"Goethe's Modernisms is a bold, compelling, and important book. Via new and utterly convincing readings of three of Goethe's seminal literary works, Tantillo offers no less than an informed critique of and compensatory corrective for some of the most egregious excesses in modern American culture in the areas of commerce and economy, religion, and education. Tantillo reveals a masterful knowledge not only of Goethe's literary, scientific, and theoretical works, but also of seminal Western thinkers such as Aristotle, Rousseau, and de Tocqueville, highlighting what these works have to teach us about the pitfalls and potentialities of our own versions of modernity. Tantillo demonstrates how the works of Goethe remain vitally modern and prescient to contemporary cultural discussions in America, and by doing so, she also articulates some of the central failings of modernity - that "progress" is imagined to be inevitable, for example, or that liberals and conservatives often represent two sides of the same coin, each blind to the larger picture. The book is written in a beautifully clear prose, and it is eminently readable." -- Heidi Schlipphacke, Associate Professor of German and European Studies, Old Dominion University
"Does Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the giant of German letters and contemporary of America's founding fathers, have anything to say about our current situation Astrida Tantillo certainly thinks so. In three engaging chapters, Tantillo uses Goethe to set the conflicted areas of capitalism, religion, and education in a larger framework. Read this book and you'll not only begin to see American versions of Werther, Faust and Wilhelm Meister in your fellow citizens, you'll also profit from Goethe's wisdom and insight into the art and technique of achieving balance in a complex world. This is applied literature in the very best sense of the word." -- Simon Richter, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Author Bio

Astrida Orle Tantillo is Visiting Associate Dean for Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, and President of The Goethe Society of North America. She is the author of The Will to Create: Goethe's Philosophy of Nature and Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics.