Research Catalog

Wilhelm Meister's theatrical calling

Title: Wilhelm Meister's theatrical calling / Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ; translated, and with an introduction by John R. Russell.
Author: Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832.
Publication: Columbia, SC, USA : Camden House, [1995], ©1995.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PT2027.W5 R87 1995	Off-site

Additional Authors

Russell, John Raymond.

Description

xvi, 250 pages; 24 cm

Summary

In 1910 a Zurich pupil showed his teacher a family heirloom, an eighteenth century manuscript that the latter identified as the long lost first version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796). During Goethe's first visit to Switzerland (1775), he had met Barbara Schulthess in Zurich. Either at that time or in their subsequent correspondence she asked to examine his novel in progress.
As was not unusual in that day, first she and then her daughter made copies of the work before returning it, thus preserving a work that Goethe, in effect, suppressed.
At the center of Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Calling) stands the theater. In following its youthful protagonist, we are systematically exposed to its many manifestations which characterize its development: from marionettes and child's play through acrobatics, vaudeville and circus down to court theater and, ultimately, modern theater reflecting middle-class, urban life.
His work on the novel was interrupted by his journey to Italy in the late 1780s, and after returning to Weimar he abandoned the Calling while preserving much of its material and poetry in the Apprenticeship, where the medium remains the theater while the focus has shifted to the maturation of young Wilhelm. The Calling is no mere early version of the Apprenticeship. It provides much material not found in the Apprenticeship and an entirely different view of the protagonist's family.

Uniform Title

Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung. English

Alternative Title

Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung.

Bibliography (note)

ISBN

1571130187 (alk. paper)

LCCN

94043843

OCLC

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries