Essays on Art and Literature

Authoritative English translations of Goethe’s most illuminating essays on art and literature

Goethe’s lifelong reflections on art and literature serve as the foundation of his work as a poet, novelist, and man of science. Anyone interested in the history of European literary criticism, art, archaeology, or the theater will find great reward in exploring these remarkable essays. This volume features such important writings as “On Gothic Architecture,” “On the Laocoon Group,” “Shakespeare: A Tribute,” and “On Interpreting Aristotle’s Poetics,” all of which shed critical light on Goethe’s thought and the aesthetic theories of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Collected Works of Goethe presents modern translations of a representative portion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s vast body of work. Selected from more than 140 volumes in German, this twelve-volume series remains the standard collection in English and features poetry, drama, fiction, memoir, criticism, and scientific writing.