Published in 1979, this study is intended as a continuation of the work of the scholars and previous commentators on Goethe's Wanderjahre. While considering the scientific structure, it concentrates first on one basic question of form--that of the series of narrative insertions--and then of necessity on one matter of content that is linked so closely with them that the two are almost inseparable, namely the concept of the family as the Urform (archetype) and metamorphosis of the types of human association. Thus the intention of this book is to contribute to the new and better understanding of the novel and which will, it is to be hoped, at long last help the work take its place as one of the two crowning masterpieces (along with Faust II) of Goethe's life.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder Die Entsagenden Lesefreundlicher Großdruck in 16-pt-Schrift Großformat, 210 x 297 mm Berliner Ausgabe, 2019 Durchgesehener Neusatz mit einer Biographie des Autors bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Theodor Borken Erstdruck: Stuttgart und Tübingen (Cotta) 1821, in erweiterter Form in: Werke, Ausgabe letzter Hand, Stuttgart (Cotta) 1829. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Goethes Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden. Textkritisch durchgesehen und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Erich Trunz, Hamburg: Christian Wegener, 1948 ff. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage unter Verwendung des Bildes: Ludwig Willroider, Der Heimweg des Musikanten, 1910. Gesetzt aus der Minion Pro, 16 pt. Henricus Edition Deutsche Klassik UG (haftungsbeschränkt)

In the decades after its publication, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship served as a touchstone for such major philosophical and literary figures as Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, and Schlegel, and was widely understood to be one of the greatest novels of the German canon. But in the decades and centuries following, the attention it has received in both disciplines has diminished in comparison to either Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther or his Elective Affinities. This volume follows the impetus of its early respondents to examine deeply what exactly Goethe's long and complicated novel is doing, and how it engages with problems and themes of human life. An interdisciplinary group of eminent scholars grapple with the novel's engagement with central philosophical questions such as individuality, development, and authority; aesthetic formation and narrative (and human) contingency; and gender, sexuality, and marriage. That these questions and their working-through in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre are in tension with one another speaks ultimately to how literature explores philosophical questions in ways that are open-ended, creative, and contain potential for new and different solutions to living with them. This unique philosophical approach to the form and purpose of a literary masterpiece illuminates new inroads into a novel at once famously complex and influential, and into the projects of one Germany's greatest writers.