You are cordially invited to a Faculty Talk by May Mergenthaler
(open to the public)
Solar-Powered Poetry:
Goethe’s „May Festival“ in the Age of Ecocriticism
January 29, 4:00-5:30
Hagerty Hall 062
main campus
From the 19th century to this day, literary critics have been hailing
as paradigmatic for a new genre of experiential lyric poetry („Erlebnislyrik“)––superseding Baroque and Rococo poetry––in which a usually male speaker expresses his emotions in addressing nature and a beloved female. While feminist critics have dismissed this type of poetry as an oppressive projection of male feelings on women, Ecocritics today similarly view it as an instrumentalizing projection of human emotions on nature.This talk will critically explore Ecocriticism’s criteria for determining the ecological character of works of lyric poetry, and suggest a new interpretation of Goethe’s „May Festival“ as a poem in which light features as central figure and as source of life and love. The light figure adapts and combines a multitude of literary, religious, and philosophical traditions, including Anacreontic poetry, the Bible, Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and Folklore, resulting in a patchwork expression of love and life that defies unambiguous categorization as either misogynist or feminist, anthropocentric or ecological. A case will be made for an approach to literature that emphasizes its historical character, without neglecting the legitimate demands of the present on the literary tradition, with the aim of enriching current debates about “ecological poetry.”
