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Abstract Header

Modernity's Pact with the Devil: Goethe's Faust, Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Storm's Der Schimmelreiter as Tales of Forgetting

Schaefer, Dennis
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6603-4348
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524055438594112

Abstract Details

2018, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Germanic Languages and Literatures.
In this MA thesis, I argue that the deal with the devil, as it manifests in 19th century German literary texts like Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust: Eine Tragodie, Gottfried Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Theodor Storm's Der Schimmelreiter, negotiates the experience of modernity and mediates the experience thereof through offering moments of forgetting. Upon approaching modernity with help from Jurgen Habermas, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx, the thesis explores the existential importance of Gluck and forgetting according to Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie furs Leben. Subsequently, I posit that the deal with the devil, as an explicit component and, later on, implicit undercurrent of 19th century German texts, takes on the role of facilitator of moments of such forgetting. Goethe's masterpiece Faust lays the foundation for this conflux of developments, motifs, and experiences in the wager its protagonists strikes with the devil Mephistopheles and in the various escapades that take Faust out of the Gothic halls of the university to the changing feudal world, where he encounters his lover Gretchen. The experience of Gluck that he significantly does not seal with her drives him, first, away into the classical spheres of Greek Antiquity, where he cannot rest to be with Helen of Troy, and, second, into a proto-capitalist dam project through which he intends to atone for his failings with Gretchen and congeal the otherwise insubstantial forgetting. In Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, the devilish Black Fiddler offers Sali and Vrenchen, the two losers of an unfolding modernity, the chance for a tainted forgetting, an offer they do not take. In Der Schimmelreiter, the deal with the devil materializes from the winning, bourgeois end to Hauke Haien, who builds a dam for purposes palpably similar to Faust's.
Robert Holub (Advisor)
John Davidson (Committee Member)
137 p.
Germanic Literature
modernity; the deal with the devil; Faust; Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe; Der Schimmelreiter; forgetting; Johann Wolfgang Goethe; Gottfried Keller; Theodor Storm

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Schaefer, D. (2018). Modernity's Pact with the Devil: Goethe's Faust, Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Storm's Der Schimmelreiter as Tales of Forgetting [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524055438594112

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Schaefer, Dennis. Modernity's Pact with the Devil: Goethe's Faust, Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Storm's Der Schimmelreiter as Tales of Forgetting. 2018. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524055438594112.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Schaefer, Dennis. "Modernity's Pact with the Devil: Goethe's Faust, Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, and Storm's Der Schimmelreiter as Tales of Forgetting." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524055438594112

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.