Bloomsbury Goethe's Modernisms

Review "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, USAGoethe'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 Goethe-Werther, Faust, Wilhelm Meister-she 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.