Abstract

Abstract:In 1798, Friedrich Schlegel published a review of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, extolling Johann Wolfgang Goethe's book as a masterpiece. At the same time, he commenced work on Lucinde, which caused a moral scandal and was criticized widely. Here, I retrace several threads of Schlegel's novel that testify to the fact that his assessment of Goethe's work may not have been so unequivocally favorable as it might seem at first sight. When looking at Wilhelm Meister through Lucinde's eyes, we can see that Schlegel challenges the Goethean philosophy of man, and his novel remains the only consistent record of this criticism.