Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson, eds., Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013. 269 pp.

Summary

Krimmer and Simpson's editorial collaboration brings together an eclectic group of scholars, who focus on the significant theme of religion in German writing from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and represent numerous perspectives on this vast topic. The editors identify their chronological field, the “long eighteenth century,” as the period extending from Wieland through Goethe and Hegel, or from Sentimentality through Romanticism (7). However, as one might expect with such a historically weighty subject, the boundaries set by the title are elastic. If we take into account Frederick Amrine's compelling discussion of Spinoza and Fichte and their reception in Deleuze, one acquires a sense of the great temporal expanse that the discussion of religion necessarily takes on: few subjects depend upon such an enormous tradition for their underpinnings.

The volume is composed of an introduction and ten essays, subdivided into four main sections: “I: Wieland and Herder,” including contributions by Claire Baldwin on the former and Tom Spencer on the latter; “II: Schiller and Goethe,” comprising three essays on the Weimar classicists, one each by Jeffrey High, Elisabeth Krimmer, and Jane K. Brown; “III: Kleist and Hölderlin,” with essays by Helmut Schneider, Lisa Beesley, and Patricia Anne Simpson; and “IV: Leibniz, Spinoza and Their Legacy,” which includes chapters by John H. Smith and Frederick Amrine. It is unclear why these divisions are necessary, since the essays generally address interdisciplinary topics, especially philosophy and literature; corralling them into such categories does little to elucidate their connections to one another or even to the overarching headings the sectional labels imply.

The essays range in quality from good to excellent, although the span of the subjects they treat may not be as comprehensive as the title suggests. The topics tend to be linked to specific authors, necessarily limiting the ground covered, but the articles themselves compensate for this by delving deeply into often-neglected writers such as Wieland and Stolberg. Clear writing characterizes the entire volume, and since some of the essays treat the same works or authors from different perspectives (e.g., Schneider and Beesley on Kleist's Die heilige Cäcilie, Spencer and Smith on Herder, and several who address, at least in passing, aspects of Goethe's Faust), the volume achieves an evenness and cohesion that contribute strongly to its overall unity.