This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The book offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all the major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe's greatest work, Faust. Alongside these works the incidents of his life are analysed, including his love affairs and his meetings with the great people of the age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Jeremy Adler shows how Goethe's encyclopedic interest in many fields influenced later thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. This biography shows that Goethe was in fact the first of the moderns - a maker of modernity.

About the Author
Jeremy Adler is Professor Emeritus of German and Senior Research Fellow at King's College London. He has published numerous books, and writes and reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Neue Zurcher Zeitung.


Book Information
ISBN 9781789141986
Author Jeremy Adler
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Reaktion Books
Publisher Reaktion Books