Goethe's Faust and Cultural Memory: Comparatist Interfaces [Hardcover]

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays examining Goethes Faust and its derivatives in European, North American, and South American cultural contexts. It takes both a canonic and archival approach to Faust in studies of adaptations, performances, appropriations, sources, and the translation of the drama contextualized within cultural environments ranging from Gnosticism to artificial intelligence. Lorna Fitzsimmons introduction sets this scholarship within a critical framework that draws together work on intertextuality and memory. Alan Corkhill looks at the ways in which the authority of the word is critiqued in Faust and Marlowes Dr. Faustus. Robert E. Norton revisits the question of Herder as Faust and the early twentieth-century context in which the claim resonated. J. M. van der Laan explores the symbolic possibilities of the mysterious Eternal-Feminine. Frederick Burwick examines Coleridges critique of Goethes Faust and his own plans for a Faustian tale on Michael Scott. Andrew Bush demonstrates how Estanislao del Campos poem Fausto retells Gounods opera in the sociolect of Argentine gauchos. David G. John examines complete productions of Goethes Faust by Peter Stein and the Goetheanum. J?rg Esleben surveys contemporary Canadian interplay with Goethes Faust. Susanne Ledanff discusses the significance of Goethes Faust for Werner Fritschs avant-garde Theater of the Now. Bruce J. MacLennan examines Faust from the perspective of a researcher in several Faustian technologies: artificial intelligence, autonomous robotics, artificial life, and artificial morphogenesis.Lorna Fitzsimmons is associate professor and coordinator, Humanities Program and the Arts and the Humanities MA Program, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles.

Of this volume's nine essays, all by leading scholars in Europe and the US, several are particularly significant. Among these are J. M. van der Laan's The Enigmatic Eternal-Feminine, which ta