Play in the Age of Goethe

“[A] stimulating introduction to a complex topic." ~Lessing Yearbook, 2023

“[Play in the Age of Goethe] is another impressive work in the series New Studies in the Age of Goethe and clearly demonstrates the productivity of scholars in the field and their many interdisciplinary connections.” ~Goethe Yearbook, 2023

"This collection's strength is evident in the care each author takes with the theme, material, and development of what amount to multiple interlocking frameworks for understanding play circa 1800."

~Monatshefte

"Play in the Age of Goethe is a brilliantly conceived and edited volume that explores the topic of 'play' with a view to both its historical development and its contemporary importance. While canonical authors receive their due, the essays likewise address domains of research not usually treated in literary historical studies. Theory and practice are skillfully blended and the various perspectives represented in the essays are mutually enhancing. The contributions fully realize the intention of the volume to make clear how rich and various, how intellectually compelling and fecund the thoughts about and fictional treatments of play in the German­-speaking lands at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries in fact were."

~David E. Wellbery, author of The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism

"This is a superb collection of essays on a topic of central interest to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and culture, as well as students of continental philosophy and theoreticians of play. The introduction is lively and intriguing, setting the stage for the essays to come and maintaining interest via a very concise, yet wide-ranging account of the importance of play and games in contemporary life and what is at stake in the practice."

~Gail K. Hart, author of Friedrich Schiller: Crime, Aesthetic, and the Poetics of Punishment