Lexington Books
Pages: 142
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-7936-1850-4 • Hardback • October 2020 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-7936-1851-1 • eBook • October 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Xiaohu Jiang is post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vienna
Acknowledgments
Part One
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Translators’ Prefaces as Battlefields for British-German Discontent with France during the Late Eighteenth Century
Chapter 3: The First English Translation of Geschichte des Agathon by John Richardson in 1773
Chapter 4: The First German Translation of The Man of Feeling by Karl Gotthelf Lessing in 1774
Chapter 5: Mackenzie’s Harley and Goethe’s Werther
Part Two
Chapter 6: Jane Austen and Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
Chapter 7: Jane Austen’s Parody: Witness of Her Literary Growth
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Works Cited
This groundbreaking book sets new standards in the understanding of both German and British eighteenth and early nineteenth-century literature. By exposing the influence of Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling on Goethe’s Werther, and uncovering new degrees of debt owed by Austen to Goethe, Jiang’s work opens fresh vistas for examining the relation between these national literatures, from Enlightenment through to the age of Romanticism.
— Matthew Gibson, University of Macau
Literature has always been a dialogue, an ongoing and lively exchange of motifs, thoughts, themes and techniques. In an exemplary way, Jiang’s study shows how literary translations become a medium, as well as a battlefield, of cultural transfer and influence. In carefully reconstructing the links between Mackenzie, Goethe, and Austen, Jiang not only rewrites an important chapter of literary dialogue from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth century. He also casts new light on how a core motif of sentimental literature travels through languages, cultural contexts, and literary tastes.
— Eva Horn, University of Vienna