In the midst of another challenging year, we are grateful to our authors, manuscript evaluators, and book reviewers—the latter so ably corralled by Sean Franzel—and, last but not least, our indefatigable copy editor, Monica Birth, who have all enabled us to put together another fascinating volume. Like the predecessors it has been our honor to edit, volume 29 of the Goethe Yearbook represents continuity and innovation; what sets it apart is the fact that several essays seem to continue the conversation begun in last year's issue.
Edward Potter's essay on Anton Reiser speaks to both the unabating pursuit of scholarship on Karl Philipp Moritz (which we have featured frequently over the past two years) as well as the renewed interest in questions of sentimentalism as a literary period and eighteenth-century style. But Potter also turns to questions of sexuality and gender. These questions, focused in concepts of patriarchy and its disruption, are at the core of Birgit Jensen's essay, which branches out into broader concerns about cultural legacies and myth and invites their ongoing consideration. Befittingly, two more essays revolve around such questions, albeit in vastly different ways. History of philosophy and science scholar Oriane Petteni introduces a novel model of reading Goethe's morphology, reminding us that questions of algorithms and pattern recognition are no longer confined to digital humanities and computational studies of literature but have arrived as part and parcel of our methodological toolkit. And Robert Kelz takes us again to Argentina. In a fascinating prequel to last year's essay on Goethe commemorations, he invites us back into the complex politics of Buenos Aires in the twentieth century and the role of a German cultural icon. Equally compelling, Kelz invokes a transnational fascination with archival material and the cultural policies both hidden and exposed in them—particularly welcome at a time when onsite research ceased being an option for so many of us, unable to physically access the treasure troves of our work. The penultimate freestanding essay in this volume, Barry Murnane's reconsideration of Goethe's Weltliteratur in the context of Handelsverkehr (trade) with China continues a conversation about the worldliness of eighteenth-century German literature and culture that has been vigorous for some time now and gestures well beyond the uptake of individual concepts or motifs. Coincidentally, it also invites further dialogue with forthcoming or fresh-off-the-press books (at the time of this writing). We hope these, too, will be well received once this volume arrives in your mailboxes. And any essay on conceptual and material trade reaches beyond this volume and anticipates the next. Beyond words, texts, and eighteenth-century worlds, we are looking forward to animated conversations about "Goethe's Things"—his "Gespräch mit den Dingen," or dialogue with objects. We hope to feature many facets of the latter in volume 30, devoted to work first presented at the Atkins Goethe Conference 2020, planned for November 2021 at the University of Chicago.
In another novelty, we feature not one but two special sections. One, quite naturally, commemorates an anniversary, Hölderlin's 250th birthday. It contains work devoted to "reading and exhibiting," first presented in collaboration with the DLA Marbach and its American Friends and here compiled by Meike Werner. The other special section, on movement, edited by Heidi Schlipphacke, picks up on research first featured at MLA 2021 and revisits many questions of sentimentalism, visuality, and narration that are at the core of canon formation and eighteenth-century thresholds of modernity. We take it as a good sign that the last essay in this section, by Eleanor ter Horst, challenges us to think about and rethink collaboration and dialogue as constitutive of authorship, just like our robust review section invites our collective engagement with terrific scholarship in eighteenth-century studies. We close these prefatory remarks with the reiteration of gratitude to all those who made yet another pandemic Yearbook possible. The work represented in this volume continues to energize the discipline in challenging ways during challenging times.
Patricia Anne Simpson
Birgit Tautz