Author Description

The book presents a series of interpretive readings of the <i>Römische Elegien</i>, <i>Sonette</i>, <i>Chinesisch-deutsche Jarhes- und Tageszeiten</i>, several trilogies, and the shorter cycles of 1821, taking into account the variety of literary devices Goethe employs to link poems together into a cycle. The author examines Goethe's role in the history of the lyric cycle and, in stressing structural design, urges a reevaluation of the cycle's emergence as a standard poetic device.