Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology

For many readers in the English-speaking world, Goethe is somehow separate from the European intellectual and literary tradition. In this unique and wide-ranging study, Matthew Bell aims to correct this view by showing how Goethe portrayed human beings as part of a natural continuum, very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology demonstrates that eighteenth-century anthropological thought provides an essential, hithertooverlooked context for the...
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For many readers in the English-speaking world, Goethe is somehow separate from the European intellectual and literary tradition. In this unique and wide-ranging study, Matthew Bell aims to correct this view by showing how Goethe portrayed human beings as part of a natural continuum, very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Goethe's Naturalistic Anthropology demonstrates that eighteenth-century anthropological thought provides an essential, hithertooverlooked context for the understanding of Goethe's literary enterprise from Werther to Die Wahlverwandtschaften.