Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Fort! Da!: Thinking Death In Freud And Faust, Mercer M. Greenwald

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Das Deutsche Lied: Eine Songwriting-Tradition Für Das Volk, Ethan Watson

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on the analysis of two prominent German Lieder. Through the works of Goethe, Schubert, and Wolf Biermann, I have attempted to show the progression of the songwriting genre and how it has transitioned from universally-understood emotion to specific political protest through the intimate monologues contained in song.

Desire In The Bildungsroman: Construction And Pursuit Of An Ideal Self Through The Ideal Other, Ethan Watson

Honors Theses

The Bildungsroman, or “novel of education,” has remained popular since Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. I examine this novel, as well as Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Walter Moers’s Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, focusing specifically on the relationships between the three male protagonists and the women that they encounter throughout their lives. Using the theories of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, literary critic René Girard, and feminist philosopher Judith Butler, I draw parallels between and contribute to the scholarly conversation of all three works (or in the case of Moers's recent fantasy, Rumo, begin …

The Devil Figure In Goethe, Boito, And Gounod, Shuang Yang

Senior Projects Fall 2016

Faust written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a worldwide famous master piece. It has been not only translated into many other languages, but also used as basis of other works such as opera, music piece, drama, movie and so on. After I read and watched Goethe’s Faust, Arrigo Boito’s opera Mefistofele and Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, I found that the drama’s protagonist is not the Faust what we think normally, instead it is actually another figure…

Goethe’S Faust And Nineteenth-Century Music: Liszt’S Faust Symphony, Mengying Wei

Senior Projects Fall 2016

This project talks about Liszt’s Faust Symphony based on Goethe’s Faust. It traces carefully through the score. After reading this project, the reader will get to know more about the Faust Symphony. As a composer, how does Liszt understand the Faust legend and how would he put a literary work into a musical composition.

The Wanderer's Path Through The Age Of Goethe: A Literary And Musical Focus, Mark Patrick Russell

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

By exploring the symbolism of the wanderer motif, we can trace its path in German literature, first through the mind of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, specifically focusing on some of his poetry from early on in his career during the Sturm und Drang Period. We then travel to the Romantic Period, as we focus on works from Wilhelm Müller with the help of musical interpretations of Franz Schubert, and finally end the journey with Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, a novella by Joseph von Eichendorff in the late Romantic Period. The wanderer, as we will see, is not the aimless figure …

Decoding Charlotte's Prevalence. A Kristevian Approach To The Representation Of Femininity In Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Zsuzsanna Rothne Zadori

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines Goethe’s portrayal of femininity in Die Wahlver-wandtschaften and how his depiction of all three central female characters relates to feminine ideals that were promoted through the theoretical gender debate of the late 1700s in Germany and Western Europe. I analyze Charlotte’s, Luciane’s, and Ottilie’s actions and interactions in various triadic character constellations in order to offer new insights into Goethe’s portrayal of femininity. In so doing, I argue that Goethe’s depiction of Charlotte holds the key to understanding how far Die Wahlverwandtschaften functions as (critical) commentary on the late Enlightenment gender discourse.

I maintain that the actions …