The Temperance of Form: Reading Regimens and Writing Diets in the Late German Enlightenment
Markgräflerstrasse 5 4057 Basel Switzerland
Christopher Wild, David Wellbery, Frauke Berndt
Through studies of Goethe, Novalis, Jean Paul, and Lichtenberg, the dissertation traces how literary authors around 1800 pursued dietetic self-cultivation (Bildung). As the pre-modern discipline for leading a temperate, healthy life, dietetics rendered the body and its interactions with the environment interpretable and governable. It thus was a way for authors to fashion an autonomous, enlightened self and to embody and realize their particular poetic programs. The dissertation demonstrates that they viewed differing regimens as blueprints for literary productivity, as virtues of their authorial personae, and as preconditions to access and express meaning through literary form.
Poetry's Face: An Introduction to Reading German Poetry through its Visuality (advanced-level German language course) Productions of Authenticity in and around Freiburg German (study abroad seminar) Modern Architecture and Modern Life: From Germany to Chicago (intermediate-level German language course) German through Fairy Tales (intermediate-level German language course) Reading German Elementary German for Beginners
Publications “The Acute Gaze of Argos: Visual Sin and Visual Psychagogy in Bidermann’s Cenodoxus.” In Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany, edited by Jeffrey Chipps Smith. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015 (forthcoming). “Jenseits von gesund und krank: Nietzsche’s Dietetics of Self-Overcoming.” In Ohnmacht des Subjekts, Macht der Persönlichkeit, edited by Christian Benne and Enrico Müller. Basel: Schwabe, 2014 (forthcoming). “Did Philologists Write the Iliad? Friedrich August Wolf’s Criteria of Style and the Demonstrative Power of Citation.” In Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Philologie, edited by Jens Elze, Zuzanna Jakubowski, Lore Knapp, Stefanie Orphal, and Heidrun Schnitzler, 185-194. Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Germanistik – Germanistik im Netz, 2011. Selected Conference Papers “Soul Food: Goethe’s ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’ as Dietetic Technology.” Thirty-Seventh Annual Germanic Studies Association Conference. Denver. 3-6 October 2013. “Lichtenberg’s Differential Calculus of Metaphor.” 128th Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Boston. 3-6 January 2013. “The Subtle Frankness of Storytelling: Parrhesia in Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten.” Thirty-Sixth Annual Germanic Studies Association Conference. Milwaukee. 4-7 October 2012. “Goethe’s Science as a Dietetic Way of Life.” Atkins Goethe Conference: Metamorphosis: Goethe and Change. University of Illinois at Chicago. Chicago. 3-6 November 2011. “Dyspepsia of the Mind and the Enlightenment’s Critical-Reading Diet.” 13. Internationaler Kongress zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts. Graz. 25-29 July 2011. “Enclosures: The Topography and Topoi of Goethe’s Narrated Childhood.” The Critical Blot: Opacity and Meaning in German Language, Literature, and Culture. Eighth Biennial Graduate Student Conference. University of Indiana. Bloomington. 25-27 February 2011.
Fulbright Grant, Herzog-Ernst-Stipendium der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowships