num_pages: 139
description: A fresh study of one of the most perplexing and daring novels ever written, one that was largely misunderstood when it first appeared, and which has emerged only in the last two decades as a work that pointed forward, stylistically and structurally, to the modernist novels of the twentieth century. Bahr shows how Goethe subordinated the role of the author-narrator, making use of a variety of sophisticated narrative devices, such as the archive, the interpolated novella (some of whose characters appear as 'real' figures in the novel itself!) to distance himself from the work, thus ironizing its apparent meaning.
language: English
title: The Novel as Archive: The Genesis, Reception, and Criticism of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre
titlecomplete: The Novel as Archive: The Genesis, Reception, and Criticism of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)
publisher: Camden House