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Abstract
This study examines the relationship between the musical and visual motifs in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister novels. In the context of the emerging aesthetic debate at the end of the eighteenth century, these motifs can be seen to be engaged in a dialogue that carries with it much broader implications than have generally been acknowledged.
The first chapter of my dissertation lays the historical and theoretical foundation for the examination of the topic. The changing status of instrumental music in the eighteenth century and the reasons for this are discussed at length. Goethe's own aesthetic thinking and his views on music are then considered from this perspective.
In the subsequent chapters I follow the musical and visual themes in Wilhelm Meister in order to determine how they function as tropes within the texts. In accordance with certain ideas in the aesthetic writings of Kant and Schiller, the dichotomy that often arises between these two themes would seem to signal a split within the self between nature (music) and reason (the visual). Musical instruments are constantly associated with unfulfilled erotic desire, the visual arts with concepts such as clarity, order and reason.
The Lehrjahre initially articulates the two themes in terms of a sharp binary opposition, which is attenuated later via the introduction of the Lied. The ambiguous sensuality of pure instrumental music gradually yields to concept-bound vocal music. By the end, the universal vision associated with the Tower Society's symbolic order apparently has the upper hand over the sensuous musical particular.
In the Wanderjahre this trend continues as the Tower Society expands its horizons; the individual and the natural world are rendered ever more transparent and "manageable" by the penetrating eye of reason. Music's material, sensual qualities are gradually eroded, and in several instances it is portrayed as little more than an intellectual abstraction. Yet the often ironic tone of the narration and the presence of recalcitrant musical fragments suggest that the identity logic governing the various utopian projects is not beyond reproach; the text keeps the dialogue between nature and reason alive.
