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To criticize the critic: George Saintsbury on Goethe. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

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From: Papers on Language & Literature
Date: 19940322
Author:Maertz, Gregory

George Saintsbury's criticism of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is an early version of the New Criticism that would dominate literary criticism in the first half of the 1900s. Saintsbury, writing at the turn of the 20th century, chided Goethe for being too pedagogical. The moral overtones in Goethe's work should have no influence on literary criticism, according to Saintsbury, who believed that critics should concern themselves with the poetic aspects of text. Saintsbury was also ahead of his time in calling for a reconfiguration of the canon.

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