EDGAR LANDGRAF is a professor of German at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He studied philosophy and literary theory in Zurich, Chicago, and Baltimore. In addition to play studies, his research interests include: critical improvisation studies; German Romanticism; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature, aesthetics, and philosophy; sociological approaches to literature; neo-cybernetics, posthumanism, and Nietzsche.ELLIOTT SCHREIBER is an associate professor of German studies at Vassar College in New York. He is author of The Space of Autonomy: Karl Philipp Moritz and the Topography of Modernity, as well as articles on numerous authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is currently at work on a book that investigates the rise of the discourse of imaginative play in Enlightenment and Romantic pedagogy, and its development through the genre of the German literary fairy tale.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Play in the Age of Goethe and TodayPart 1: Free PlayChapter 1: Beauty and Erotic Play: Anacreontic Poetry's Transformation of Aesthetic PhilosophyChristian P. WeberChapter 2: Free Play in German Idealism and PoststructuralismSamuel HeidepriemPart 2: Games of ChanceChapter 3: "Mit dem Spiele spielen": Lessing's Play for ToleranceEdgar LandgrafChapter 4: Play with Memory and Its Topoi: FaustNicholas RenniePart 3: Children's PlayChapter 5: Narcissus at Play: Goethe, Piaget, and the Passage from Egocentric to Social PlayElliott SchreiberChapter 6: Playthings: Goethe's Favorite ToysPatricia Anne SimpsonChapter 7: Kindergarten and the Pedagogy of Play in the German Educational RevolutionIan F. McNeelyInterludeChapter 8: Invective, Eulogy, Play: Jacobi's Sock 1799Christiane FreyPart 4: The Play of LanguageChapter 9: Between Speaking and Listening: Jean Paul's Word-PlayMichael PowersChapter 10: Authorship, Translation, Play: Schleiermacher's Metalangual PoeticsDavid MartynChapter 11: Playing with Words in Early German RomanticismBrian TuckerAcknowledgmentsBibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex

"This collection's strength is evident in the care each author takes with the theme, material, and development of what amount to multiple interlocking frameworks for understanding play circa 1800."— Monatshefte"This is a superb collection of essays on a topic of central interest to scholars of eighteenth-century literature and culture, as well as students of continental philosophy and theoreticians of play. The introduction is lively and intriguing, setting the stage for the essays to come and maintaining interest via a very concise, yet wide-ranging account of the importance of play and games in contemporary life and what is at stake in the practice."— Gail K. Hart, author of Friedrich Schiller: Crime, Aesthetic, and the Poetics of Punishment"[Play in the Age of Goethe] is another impressive work in the series New Studies in the Age of Goethe and clearly demonstrates the productivity of scholars in the field and their many interdisciplinary connections."— Goethe Yearbook, 2023"Play in the Age of Goethe is a brilliantly conceived and edited volume that explores the topic of 'play' with a view to both its historical development and its contemporary importance. While canonical authors receive their due, the essays likewise address domains of research not usually treated in literary historical studies. Theory and practice are skillfully blended and the various perspectives represented in the essays are mutually enhancing. The contributions fully realize the intention of the volume to make clear how rich and various, how intellectually compelling and fecund the thoughts about and fictional treatments of play in the German-speaking lands at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries in fact were."— David E. Wellbery, author of The Specular Moment: Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism"[A] stimulating introduction to a complex topic."— Lessing Yearbook, 2023