Goethe's Faust I Outlined

Moritz Retzsch's Prints in Circulation
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-51855-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 113, 450 Seiten, Format (B × H): 215 mm x 289 mm, Gewicht: 1813 g

Reihe: Library of the Written Word / Library of the Written Word - The Industrial World

In a new approach to Goethe's Faust I, Evanghelia Stead extensively discusses Moritz Retzsch's twenty-six outline prints (1816) and how their spin-offs made the unfathomable play available to larger reader communities through copying and extensive distribution circuits, including bespoke gifts. The images amply transformed as they travelled throughout Europe and overseas, revealing differences between countries and cultures but also their pliability and resilience whenever remediated.

This interdisciplinary investigation evidences the importance of print culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in nations involved in competition and conflict. Retzsch's foundational set crucially engenders parody, and inspires the stage, literature, and three-dimensional objects, well beyond common perceptions of print culture's influence.

This book is available in open access thanks to an Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) grant.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stead, Evanghelia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Einzelne Künstler: Biographien, Monografien
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunst: Rezeption, Einflüsse und Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Druck und Drucken

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Abbreviations

Introduction: Air View and Ant Perspective

Moritz Retzsch’s Etchings after Goethe’s Faust I

1 Retzsch in the German States, a Borderline Celebrity

1.1 Profile in Contrast

1.2 Romantic Pranks and Rituals

1.3 Portraits and Sociability

1.4 A Poetic Mind

1.5 The Toils of Fancy and Melancholy

1.6 Fluctuating Fate in Nineteenth-Century German States

1.7 Plights and Plusses of Comparison (Retzsch, Cornelius & Naeke)

1.8 German Amendments in the Twentieth Century

1.9 Conclusion

2 Faust I Outlined and the Original Retzsch Effect

2.1 A Modern Fourfold Device

2.2 Goethe’s Gifts

2.3 In Goethe’s Orb

2.4 Retzsch at Work: Early Correspondence

2.5 A Speculation on Relics

2.6 “Full of Spirit”

2.7 Outline Reformation

2.8 Retzsch in Colour

2.9 To Conclude

3 German Editions and Copies: The Bait of Rich Morsels

3.1 Avowable (and Uncertain) Cotta Portfolios

3.2 From Portfolios to Albums

3.3 Pirated Goods

3.4 Styled for the Ladies

3.5 Valuing Copies in Visual Circulation

4 First Steps in Britain

4.1 A Momentous Gift from Perthes to Crabb Robinson

4.2 Imported Wares and Motley Exemplars

4.3 Media Coverage and Publicity (A Mediated Launch)

4.4 A First English Point of View (George Soane’s Letterpress)

4.5 Books as Cultural Objects: Readers and Cultural Representation

4.6 Dibdin in Action

5 Retzsch Copied in Britain and Beyond

5.1 Attractive and Collectable

5.2 Cultural Adaptability

5.3 Boosey’s 1820 Edition Re-issued?

5.4 “A More Careful Abstract”

5.5 Faustus as Template

5.6 Retzsch Gains Ground in Other Garb and Guises

5.7 Retzsch Wielded by Illustration

5.8 Competing Formats

5.9 “Bound to Please”

5.10 First Conclusions on Foreign Circulation

6 Retzsch in France and Belgium

6.1 Retzsch by Muret for Artists, Readers, and Print Collectors

6.2 Three Little Audot

6.3 A Francized Original Retzsch

6.4 Copies vs Originals? The Brussels Case

6.5 Retzsch in French Nineteenth-Century Print Culture

6.6 Retzsch’s Diffuse Influence

6.7 Conclusion

7 Extensive and Intensive Iconography

7.1 Loose Leaves

7.2 Copies, Copies, Copies …

7.3 Bowdlerizing

7.4 A Kiss’s Exceptional Fortune

7.5 Spread and Sway on Style, Form and Set

7.6 Extensive vs. Intensive Iconography

7.7 Extensive Rations

7.8 Intensive Inspiration

7.9 Recycling and Authorship in Image Circulation

8 The Power of Parody: A Crow amongst Nations

8.1 A Crow’s Quill

8.2 Travesties

8.3 Mischief in Images

8.4 Homecoming and “Who Loves a Laugh”

8.5 A Mocking Deity with a Meerschaum Pipe

9 Outlines in the Limelight

9.1 Aptitudes and Assets

9.2 Weimar Trials

9.3 Staging: German Décors

9.4 British and French Décors

9.5 Time, Stage and the Arts

9.6 Performance: Fixed, Inviolable Instants?

9.7 Outfits: Models and Embodiment

9.8 Creating Types

9.9 In the Limelight over Time

10 Ink Worlds

10.1 Devilish Relish of Converted Israelites

10.2 Théophile Gautier from Travelogue to Aesthetics

10.3 Visual Traps in Prose

10.4 Pictures within the Picture in Illustrated Books

10.5 Games of Fiction, Tricks and Screens

11 Two Gifted Women

11.1 Goethe’s and Byron’s Gifts

11.2 The Book as a Rose

11.3 Twelve Apostles and a Faust

12 Artefacts: Poetics of Everyday Life

12.1 Treasures of Gold and China

12.2 Porcelain for the Many

12.3 Moulded and Backlit

12.4 In Tin and Frail Paper

12.5 Conclusion

Conclusion: Grains of Sand as Cities

Appendix 1: Moritz Retzsch’s 26 Umrisse in Original and Copied Editions

Appendix 2: Moritz Retzsch’s Prints Remediated

Bibliography

Index on Moritz Retzsch

General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Evanghelia Stead, Professor of Comparative Literature and Print Culture at UVSQ Paris Saclay, has published extensively on the fin-de-siècle, Greek and Latin myths in modern literature, texts and iconography, periodicals, and books as cultural objects, including Goethe's Faust I.