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The article presents translations from the journal "Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum." The articles translated include "Preliminary Tasks of Comparative Literature, Part III: Decaglotism," "Laws of Comparative Literary Research" and "Goethe's World Literature: Nine Theses on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Goethe's Death."

The twentieth century is witness to a revival of interest in the bildungsroman as writers, especially from postcolonies in the Global South, turn to it to reflect on concerns of history, culture, and social life in a postcolonial setting. Scholars, however, disagree regarding the nature of these reworkings. Some see them as a continuation of the original European models established by Goethe, Dickens, and other European writers. Others find such associations Eurocentric and call for more local standards of evaluation. This article examines this debate by looking closely at a version of the postcolonial bildungsroman proposed by the Kannada writer U. R. Ananthamurthy in his 1965 novel Samskara. The novel follows an orthodox Brahmin priest from Karnataka who, disillusioned by the corruption and moral decay in his community, embarks on a pilgrimage to rediscover his identity in the rapidly modernizing world of twentieth‐century India. Ananthamurthy's bildungsroman, while retaining some structural similarities, departs from European models in fundamental ways. The motif of the hero's journey, for instance, is flipped. The novel tracks the hero's growing discontentment with his community leading to a sense of communal alienation, thus inverting the European journey‐trajectory that typically follows the hero's movement toward social integration. It also deviates from the generic Western rags‐to‐riches storyline that complements that hero's road to social integration. Instead, it adopts the narrative structure of the Niti‐shastra, a set of precolonial Hindu texts that teach about the wise conduct of life. Such readings not only facilitate fresh ways of understanding the relationship between the Western and the postcolonial models, but they also allow new insights into understanding how South Asian authors utilize the bildungsroman to rediscover precolonial and classical works through modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of Georg Lukács's development and divergent scholarly perspectives are reconsidered in light of his little-read 1909 dissertation, The Developmental History of Modern Drama. This long early work, with its detailed methodological apparatus, establishes a baseline of comparison for his later and better-known works, especially in Soul and Form (1911), The Theory of the Novel (1916), and History and Class Consciousness (1923). This framework can reconnect Lukács's early theory of literary genres to contemporary debates on form in literature, epistemology, and political and social theory. Attention to the systematics of Lukács's earliest historical-transcendental criteria of literary form allows his genre poetics to be understood more flexibly than has often been assumed. The difference between novel and modern drama, for example, is not categorical but functions as a differential of protagonists' possible forms of agency and autonomy in a world defined by passivity and heteronomy. The political subtext of Lukács's early theory of the tragic pursues a double agenda of historical symptomatics (defining tragedy as the genre of a class achieving consciousness of its own decline) and existential radicalization (totalizing onstage and offstage tragedy as the pinnacle of aesthetic experience and the heroic rupture into a new historical era). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What made Goethe's Faust so special to Georg Lukács? The contribution explores possible answers and examines the theoretical implications of the unique position Goethe's Faust occupies in Lukács's postwar writings. During his engagement Lukács modifies some of his most dearly held convictions. For example, his criticism of mixing genres disappears in his identification of Faust's peculiar form as an "epic-dramatic form" said to approximate the elusive epical poem. But as such, it is also the paradoxical manifestation of a singular form without predecessors or followers. The essay concludes with a coda on the aftermath of Lukács's Faust obsession in the work of the latter-day Marxist Franco Moretti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current reckoning with systemic bias and discrimination calls for centering historical and social context in narrative theory, as in other domains of academic and public life. This article undertakes that centering in rhetorical narrative theory. Informed by genre theory, it argues for theorizing narrative occasion by focusing on two dimensions: 1) the social positions it entails and 2) the conceptual frameworks it engages. Readings of two German-language texts, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1774/1787) and Babak Ghassim and Usama Elyas's "Behind Us, My Country" (2015), establish continua for mapping these social positions and conceptual frameworks and for evaluating their thematic salience in the narrative. Crucially, these methods are applied not only to text-internal figures like narrators and characters but also to the real-world parties to narrative: authors and actual readers. In addition to providing a framework for describing narrative occasion, this socially attuned analysis highlights problems with rhetorical narrative theory's treatment of audience, particularly its idealization of the authorial audience. The article thus points the way toward dismantling the universal thinking embedded in other narratological categories and suggests that rhetorical and cognitive narrative theories could be combined to understand how cognitive frameworks shape narrative occasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of the legendary Islamic figure Khizr in the works of Norman O. Brown, Muhammad Iqbal, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, this essay proposes world literature as a methodology for deriving possible alternatives to existing worlds. By tracing the dialectic of individual and collective selfhood in the figure of Khizr, the author delineates the fault lines that the encounter with this elusive figure portends for bourgeois imperialist regimes of identity. The counterpoint conveyed through the figure of Khizr is one that unveils paths toward practices of self-de-particularization and a symbolism of collective unity. Even in the twenty-first century, the figure of Khizr continues to serve as a potential for reawakening a linkage between Marxism, Islamic mysticism, the poetics of prophecy, the politics of nonidentity, and the philology of cultural contact zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features German Dramatist and Historian Friedrich Schiller and his famous inaugural lecture "What is and to what end does one study universal history" at Jena University. According to the article, he reflected on the nature of history and its discursive implications and noting how world history appears to the human observer. It also notes that Schiller and German Novelist and Dramatist Johan Wolfgang von Goethe became close friends and collaborators.

This essay presents a comment about musician Ludwig van Beethoven's composition related to poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's tragic production "Egmont," and titled "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung." Goethe's own comment regarding Beethoven's contribution was that for all its great worth, the music only makes a long play still longer. A performance of the play with the complete incidental music could last five hours, with no time scheduled for breaks. It is no wonder, then, that numerous reviewers described audiences applauding, drinking punch, eating ices, and smoking cigars during the entr'actes.

Discusses the transposition of fate and agency that is prefigured in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel "Die Wahlverwandtschaften." Twining of the human and object world as a dialectical figure; Principle of a dialectic relationship between the mimetic, object-like way in which the work of art snuggles up to reality; Text that philosophizes the dialectic between nature and reason; Determination of whether the dialectic expressed in literature can also describe the dialectic lived out in the life of literature.

Discusses the fascination of German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for Oriental culture. Possible reason behind Goethe's interest towards Orientalism and its writers; Efforts of Goethe to keep himself informed about Oriental culture; Analysis of works that convey his interest for the culture.

Deals with the relevance of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's concept of world literature for contemporary comparatism. Analysis of the use of the term world literature by Goethe in 1827; Goethe's vision of a novel literary modality; Political factors underlying Goethe's enunciation of a world literature concept.

The article illustrates the transformation of the German-Jewish image of philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The author discusses the controversy in 1780s Germany involving the poem "Prometheus," by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, explores how writer Heinrich Heine defines Goethe's pantheism, and analyzes poet Paul Celan's poetry concerning Spinoza.

Discusses the philosophy of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Views on women and gender; Information on procreation in his botanical works; His theory of gender that is not based upon sexual organs.

Discusses the interpretation of Leon Blum and Anatolij Vasil'evic Lunacarskij of the play 'Faust,' by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Similar issues raised by the version of the play; Association of Goethe's drama in the writings of Blum; Characterizations of the writings of Blum.

A critique is presented on the author's preface to British poet Matthew Arnold's 1853 book "Poems," focusing on evidence from the preface that Arnold was influenced by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Romance poetry, Arnold's attitude toward Architectonicè, or the creative poetic ideal, and his development as a poet are discussed, as well as his opinions on the social function of literature.

Presents a contextual analysis of the opera 'Faust II,' by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Details of its stage directions; Contributions of Etienne-Gaspard Robertson, a Belgian-French scientist, to the opera; Proposed link between 'Faust II' and Louis Daguerre's diorama.

Within the context of prosodic feature analysis, this essay discusses some German manifestations of hexameter verse from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Samples of hexameters by seven German poets--Johann Heinrich Voss, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, Eduard M6rike, Friedrich Hebbel, Thomas Mann, and Bertolt Brecht--are compared on both the metrical and the prosodic level of analysis. The metrical pattern for the German hexameter line allows for sixteen distinct line-types based solely on the distribution of syllables in nonprominent positions of the meter, and the data show that most poets favored certain line-types and tended to avoid others. Voss, Goethe, Schiller, and Hebbel, for example, favored line-types that begin with the configuration xoxoox (where x and o represent syllables in prominent and nonprominent positions, respectively), while Brecht preferred lines that are dactylic throughout, and Mann displayed no clear preference for any particular line-type. The data for the metrical configurations also reveal a strong similarity between the hexameters favored by Goethe and Hebbel, despite the fact that Hebbel's were written about sixty years after Goethe's. On the prosodic level, there are striking differences between the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets and the twentieth-century poets (i.e., Mann and Brecht). For example, compound words containing contiguous stressed syllables, which occur only rarely in hexameter verse by Goethe, Schiller, and Hebbel, were consistently used in the same metrical relation by other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets; Mann was inconsistent in his use of this word-type; and Brecht almost always placed it precisely in a metrical relation which the earlier poets invariably avoided. Among other things, Brecht's prosodic style is marked by the extremely high overall frequency of this word-type, including multiple occurrences in single lines. In terms of both feature assignme... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the visit of Americans to meet German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in early nineteenth century. Significance of the meeting between Americans and Goethe; Reception of Americans by the author; List of American visitors.