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Notes on video lecture:
Goethe's Corpus and World Literature
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on April 27, 2017 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
innocent, Persian, 1791, Ming, management, family, diplomatic, Four, duchy, 1st, Job, 80, world, pilgrimage, Rome, wider, Renaissance, Persia, improbable, Chinese, Xueqin, Grimm, autobiographical, short, corrupt, Frankfurt, Duke, characters, West, Divan, king, Hafez, Red, wine, Western, 17th, Classicism
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Chinese novels translated into                languages by 1827
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very few
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relatively           
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fast-paced
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love stories full of adventures
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                     coincidences
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magic
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nothing like the                novels that have since become part of the world literature canon
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The Story of the Stone (Dream of the        Chamber)
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by Cao              (1715-1764)
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one of China's          Great Classical Novels
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the novel circulated in manuscript copies with various titles until its print publication in         
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first      chapters were written by Cao Xueqin
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the novel is believed to be semi-                                , mirroring the rise and decline of author Cao Xueqin's own family and, by extension, of the Qing Dynasty
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remarkable not only for its huge cast of                      and psychological scope, but also for its precise and detailed observation of the life and social structures typical of 18th-century Chinese society
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takes place inside a              compound
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Journey to the         
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Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the          dynasty
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known as Monkey
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an extended account of the legendary                      of the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang who traveled to the Western Regions, i.e. Central Asia and India, to obtain Buddhist sacred texts and returned after many trials and much suffering
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lots of adventure
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Haoqiu zhuan
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"The pleasing history" or "The fortunate union"
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a Chinese novel published in the          Century
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plot: the beauty, Shui Bingxin, and the scholar, Tie Zhongyu, want to avenge their fathers and go against the bureaucracy, which is               
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Goethe didn't limit himself to Chinese novels
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a few years earlier, Wilhelm           , wrote to his brother about Goethe's doings
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William Grimm on Goethe: "He's into                stuff, composed a collection of poems in the manner of Hafiz, and he is studying Arabic. And all this on top of reading from and explaining Haoqiu zhuan, another Chinese novel."
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Goethe's move to Weimar
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horizon was much            than that of his contemporaries
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but chose to live in a small town of 6,000 people for pretty much his entire life
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he had grown up in the much larger and more cosmopolitan                   
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he was invited by the          of Weimar to live in that city
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the            only had about 20,000 subjects
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an independent entity in need of                     
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Goethe made himself indispensable
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got involved in the theater
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took charge of roads, finances, and warfare
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he sent on                      missions
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he fought against Napoleon
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Goethe's interest in world literature
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many people didn't understand his drive for this
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it was a matter of reading and writing
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wrote much about his travels
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had a yearning for the wider world inspired by the Persian poet           
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Hafez (1326-1389)
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lauded the joys of love and          but also targeted religious hypocrisy
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wrote a collection of poetry called the West-Eastern           
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bemoans the fact that he cannot travel to             
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he intends to bridge the distance through imaginary leaps based on his intense study of Hafez
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Faust
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visits themes found in Hafez
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also inspired by the Sanskrit play Abhijñānashākuntala
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from the        century BCE
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abandoned at birth by her parents, Shakuntala is reared in the secluded, sylvan hermitage of the sage Kanva, and grows up a comely but                  maiden
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a          is enchanted by her and marries her
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also modeled on the story of       
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Rome
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only telling his duke and butler, he set off for         
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the land of the                        and Roman antiquity
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this made him take up writing again, inaugurating a new period of literature: Weimar                     
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laid the foundation for            literature

Ideas and Concepts:

On the impossibility of making distinctions in any world, fictional or actual, via tonight's Masterpieces of Literature class: "Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true. Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real. - Dream of the Red Chamber, one of China's Four Great Classical Novels, by Cao Xueqin (1715-1764)"
Early 19th century German literature geeks, William Grimm to his brother Jacob on Goethe, via tonight's Masterpieces of Literature class: "He's into Persian stuff, composed a collection of poems in the manner of Hafiz, and he's studying Arabic. And all this on top of reading from and explaining Haoqiu zhuan, another Chinese novel."
Goethe and Eckermann
Goethe's Corpus and World Literature
The 19th Century Recovery of the Library of Ashurbanipal from 650 BC
Gilgamesh as World Literature
Themes from the Epic of Gilgamesh
Enkidu Introduced to Culture Via Shamhat
Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Humbaba and the Country
Gilgamesh and the Story of the Flood