“Die pilgernde Törin”: Genesis, Revaluation, and Mirroring in Goethe's Wanderjahre

Summary

The critical revaluation of the structure and content of Goethe's Wanderjahre in the past three decades has allowed most scholars to agree that the novel presents, not one narrative point of view, but many, indeed an “archive” of perspectives embodied in manuscripts and fragments from a wide cast of characters, assembled into the novel's present form by a fictional editor. Goethe is thereby credited with having anticipated the modern novel by his dispersal of the function of the author or narrator among a plethora of independently responsible narrators. Because no particular narrator is privileged as authoritative, the “implied reader” is obliged to participate actively in appropriating and understanding the text, almost as if it were fragments of reality to be processed. The primary structural principles by which Goethe organizes his materials and suggests ways for the reader to order and understand them are two: First,Wilhelm recedes as the center of attention and becomes a “string” on which to thread various stories and events that come to his attention. Second, the various materials “mirror” each other—not necessarily in sequence or pairs but as pieces whose themes or motifs reinforce, recall, illuminate, relativize, or call into doubt the perspectives expressed in other “mirroring” pieces through the novel.