Author Description

The <i>Goethe Yearbook</i> is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, encouraging North American Goethe scholarship by publishing original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the <i>Goethezeit</i> while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world.<br> Volume 19 of the <i>Goethe Yearbook</i> continues to investigate the connection between Goethe's scientific theories and his aesthetics, with essays on his optics and his plant morphology. A special section examines the central role that Goethe philology has had in establishing practices that shaped the history of <i>Germanistik</i> as a whole. The yearbookalso includes essays on legal history and the novella, Goethe <i>Lieder</i>, esoteric mysticism in <i>Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre</i>, and Werther's sexual pathology. The volume also includes three essays re-examining Goethe's aesthetics in the context of the history of deconstruction, as well as the customary book review section.<br><br> Contributors: Beate Allert, Frauke Berndt, Sean Franzel, Stefan Hajduk, Bernd Hamacher, Jeffrey L. High, Francien Markx, Lavinia Meier-Ewert, Ansgar Mohnkern, Rüdiger Nutt-Kofoth, Edward T. Potter, Chenxi Tang, Robert Walter.<br><br> Daniel Purdy is Associate Professor of German at Pennsylvania State University. Book review editor Catriona MacLeod is Associate Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania.