Noble Savages and English Gardeners: Kulturkritik from Rousseau to Goethe
 A Faculty Seminar Presented by Franz Kempf

One of the grand designs of the Enlightenment is the transition from the French Garden to the English Garden. With its inherent “culture-nature” juxtaposition, the transition is closely linked to Kulturkritik. Redefining the binary opposition as a “both … and” relationship, Kulturkritik has emerged in recent scholarship as the discursive and self-critical mode of reflection of the Enlightenment. As such, it provides the theoretical framework for my exploration of the English Garden as a utopia and dystopia. Since the English Garden – and its philosophical, political, anthropological, and aesthetic derivatives – figures prominently in Rousseau, Schiller, and Goethe, my argument draws on their works, chief among them the two Discourses, the Reveries, the New Eloise, the Elective Affinities, Faust's monologues and the last scene of the second part of Faust. (The Goethe discussion will reference the Baroque era painter Claude Lorrain but no visuals will be used.)