Poets, painters, philosophers, and scientists alike debated new ways of thinking about visual culture in the âlong eighteenth centuryâ. The essays in The Enlightened Eye: Goethe and Visual Culture demonstrate the extent to which Goethe advanced this discourse in virtually all disciplines. The concept of visuality becomes a constitutive moment in a productive relationship between the verbal and visual arts with far-reaching implications for the formation of bourgeois identity, pedagogy, and culture. From a variety of theoretical perspectives, the contributors to this volume examine the interconnections between aesthetic and scientific fields of inquiry involved in Goetheâs visual identity. By locating Goetheâs position in the examination of visual culture, both established and emerging scholars analyze the degree to which visual aesthetics determined the cultural production of both the German-speaking world and the broader European context. The contributions analyze the production, presentation, and consumption of visual culture defined broadly as painting, sculpture, theater, and scientific practice. The Enlightened Eye promises to invest new energy and insight into the discussion among literary scholars, art historians, and cultural theorists about many aspects of visual culture in the Age of Goethe.
"â¦an interesting collection of essays exploring the centrality and legacy of Goetheâs preoccupation with the âvisualâ in the discipline of art, literature, aesthetics, painting, sculpture, and theatre." - in: MLR, 104.1 (2009)
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Patricia Anne SIMPSON and Evelyn K. MOORE: The Enlightened Eye: Visual Culture in the Age of Goethe
I.Visions/Revisions of the Neoclassical Aesthetic
Melissa DABAKIS: Angelika Kauffmann, Goethe, and the Arcadian Academy in Rome
Catriona MACLEOD: Sweetmeats for the Eye: Porcelain Miniatures in Classical Weimar
Beate ALLERT: Goethe, Runge, Friedrich: On Painting
Margaretmary DALEY: The Gendered Eye of the Beholder: The Co-ed Art History of the Jena Romantics
Mary Helen DUPREE: Elise in Weimar: âActress-Writersâ and the Resistance to Classicism
Patricia Anne SIMPSON: Visions of the Nation: Goethe, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Ernst Moritz Arndt
II. The Violence of Vision: Science, Technology, and the Stage of Language
Evelyn K. MOORE: Goethe and Lavater: A Specular Friendship
Elliott SCHREIBER: Towards an Aesthetics of the Sublime Augenblick: Reading Karl Philipp Moritz Reading Goetheâs Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
Clark S. MUENZER: Fugitive Images and Visual Memory in Goetheâs Discourse on Color
Eric Hadley DENTON: The Technological Eye: Theater Lighting and Guckkasten in Michaelis and Goethe
Astrida Orle TANTILLO: The Subjective Eye: Goetheâs Farbenlehre and Faust
Heide CRAWFORD: Poetically Visualizing Urgestalten. The Union of Nature, Art, and the Love of a Woman in Goetheâs âDie Metamorphose der Pflanzenâ
Richard BLOCK: Scribbles from Italy: Cy Twomblyâs Experiment in Seeing Goethe See Language
III. Appendix
Notes on the Contributors
Index