Literature and Image Man the of AA TT LLDDIINNEE RRAANNSSAACCTTIIOONN AA DDiivviissiioonn ooff TTrraannssaaccttiioonn PPuubblliisshheerrss NNeeww BBrruunnsswwiicckk ((UU..SS..AA..)) aanndd LLoonnddoonn ((UU..KK..)) Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.) A Center for Urban Policy Research Book Literature and Image Man the of Communica(cid:31)on in Society, Volume 2 LEO LOWENTHAL A T LDINE RANSACTION A Division of Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.) Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.) A Center for Urban Policy Research Book First published 1986 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1986 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 85-20687 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lowenthal, Leo. Literature and the image of man. (Communication in society / Leo Lowenthal; v. 2) Bibliography: p. 1.Literature and society—Europe. 2. European literature—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Lowenthal, Leo. Communication in society; v. 2. PN51.L6 1986b 809’.03 ISBN 0-88738-057-3 85-20687 ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-5700-0 (pbk) Contents Acknowledgments vii Preface: Social Meanings in Literature ix Part I: Studies on the European Drama and Novel from the Renaissance to the Threshold of Modernity 1 The Spanish Dramatists 3 Lope de Vega, 1562–1635 3 Calderon, 1600–1681 11 2 Cervantes, 1547–1616 19 Mobility: Sancho Panza 22 Creativity: Dulcinea 26 Property: The Gypsies 34 Justice: Don Quixote 40 3 Shakespeare’s The Tempest 51 The Concept of Human Nature 51 Five Themes on the Island 54 Secularized Humility 75 Excursus A: The Tempest, Act I, Scene 1 85 4 The Classical French Theater 93 Corneille, 1606–1684 94 Racine, 1639–1699 101 Molière, 1622–1673 112 5 From Werther to Wilhelm Meister 127 Individualism and the Middle Class 127 Werther: The Dislocated Individual 130 Wilhelm Meister: The Integrated Individual 137 World Literature and Popular Culture 142 6 Henrik Ibsen, 1828–1906 153 Private Life and Social Forces 154 The Dilemma of Freedom and Necessity 161 Excursus B: Note on August Strindberg 173 7 Knut Hamsun, 1860–1952 181 Nature 181 Hero Worship 191 Urban Society 199 Nihilism 202 Part II: Studies on the German Novel in the Nineteenth Century 8 Romanticism: Revolution Repressed 217 9 “ Young Germany”: Prehistory of Bourgeois Consciousness 231 10 Eduard Mörike: Troubled Embourgeoisement 251 11 Gustav Freytag: Bourgeois Materialism 259 12 Friedrich Spielhagen: Bourgeois Idealism 273 13 Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Apologia of the Upper Class 301 14 Gottfried Keller: Bourgeois Repression 327 Afterword: From Helmut Dubiel, Editor of the German Edition of This Volume 343 Acknowledgments Part II of this volume as well as Excursus B in Part I and the last section, “Reception,” in chapter 7 were translated from German into English, especially for this volume, by Christine Schoefer, to whom I am pro- foundly grateful. I also acknowledge with thanks James Porter’s English rendition of Helmut Dubiel’s “Afterword.” Part I was originally published under the title, Literature and the Image of Man, Beacon Press, 1956. Part II appeared in German under the title Erzählkunst und Gesellschaft, Luchterland, 1971. The essays on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hamsun in Part I had appeared in a German version in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in the 1930s. vii Preface: Social Meanings in Literature Creative literature conveys many levels of meaning, some intended by the author, some quite unintentional. An artist sets out to invent a plot, to describe action, to depict the interrelationships of characters, to emphasize certain values; wittingly or unwittingly, he stamps his work with uniqueness through an imaginative selection of problems and personages. By this very process of selection—an aspect of cre- ativity that is most relevant to the theme of this book—he presents an explicit or implicit picture of man’s orientation to his society: privileges and responsibilities of classes; conceptions of work, love, and friend- ship, of religion, nature, and art. Through an analysis of the works included in this volume, an image may be formed of man’s changing relation to himself, to his family, and to his social and natural environ- ment, from the beginning of the seventeenth to the threshold of the twentieth century. The writer indeed develops believable characters and places them in situations involving interaction with others and with the society in which they live. He must present what he considers to be the essentials of the individual largely through the behavior of particular characters as they face concrete situations. Of course, the historian does not neglect such considerations. But he often depersonalizes the reaction of the individual to other individuals and to society in order to reveal the broader political, economic, and social forces at work. At the other extreme, memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, and letters might be offered as sources of data at least as personal and specific as the contents of imaginative literature. In such personal documents, however, rationalization and, particularly, self-justification often blur or distort the image of social reality. It is the artist who portrays what is more real than reality itself. One of the concerns which the creative writer shares with the theo- retician is to describe and name new experience. The artist’s desire ix