Since Hegel, the idea of an end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. This book analyzes its role and its rhetoric in Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Heidegger in order to account for the topic's enduring persistence. In addition to providing a general overview of the main thinkers of post-Idealist German aesthetics, the book explores the relationship between tradition and modernity. For despite the differences that distinguish one philosopher's end of art from another's, all authors treated here turn the end of art into an occasion to thematize and to reflect on the very thing that modernism cannot or should not be: tradition. As a discourse, the end of art is one of our modern traditions.

Since Hegel, the idea of an end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. This book analyzes its role and its rhetoric in Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Heidegger in order to account for the topic's enduring persistence. In addition to providing a general overview of the main thinkers of post-Idealist German aesthetics, the book explores the relationship between tradition and modernity. For despite the differences that distinguish one philosopher's end of art from another's, all authors treated here turn the end of art into an occasion to thematize and to reflect on the very thing that modernism cannot or should not be: tradition. As a discourse, the end of art is one of our modern traditions.

This year's volume is highlighted by a special section on Goethe's narrative events in addition to a range of other articles from emerging and established scholars. The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, encouraging North American Goethe scholarship by publishing original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Volume 26 features a special section on Goethe's narrative events, with contributions on "Narrating (against) the Uncanny: Goethe's "Ballade" vs. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann," "The Absence of Events in Die Wahlverwandtschaften," and "Countering Catastrophe: Goethe's Novelle in the Aftershock of Kleist." This issue also showcases work presented atthe 2017 Atkins Goethe Conference (Re-Orientations around Goethe), including contributions by Eva Geulen on morphology and W. Daniel Wilson on the Goethe Society of Weimar in the Third Reich. In addition there are articles by emerging and established scholars on Klopstock, Schiller, Goethe and objects, dark green ecology, and texts of the Goethezeit and beyond through the lens of world literature. Book reviews conclude the volume. Contributors: Lisa Marie Anderson, Thomas O. Beebee, Fritz Breithaupt, Christopher Chiasson, Patrick Fortmann, Sean Franzel, Eva Geulen, Willi Goetschel, Stefan Hajduk, Samuel Heidepriem, Bryan Klausmeyer, Lea Pao, Elizabeth Powers, James Shinkle, Heather I. Sullivan, Christian P. Weber, W. Daniel Wilson, Karin A. Wurst. The Goethe Yearbook is edited, beginning with this volume, by Patricia Anne Simpson, Professor of German and Chairperson of Modern Languages at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Birgit Tautz, George Taylor Files Professor of Modern Languages at Bowdoin College. Book Review Editor is Sean Franzel, Associate Professor of German at the University ofMissouri-Columbia.