Sprachskepsis und Poetologie: Goethes Romane 'Die Wahlverwandtschaften' und 'Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre'

In his late novels, Goethe formulates a profound critique of language and thus challenges his own capacity to represent. Goethe’s fundamental scepticism about language derives from an irresolvable ambiguity of words coupled with limitations on their expressiveness; in the case of Elective Affinities and Journeyman Years this leads to the conception of an open work of art. Using detailed textual analysis, Christian Mittermüller reconstructs a hitherto scarcely recognised connection between s...