SOURCE: “Monologue and Dialogue in the Lehrjahre,” in Tracing Subversive Currents in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Camden House, 1997, pp. 163-83.

In the following excerpt from his study of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Blair focuses on the “multiplicity of voices” and their alternate representations of truth in Goethe's novel.

The chapters of this study have viewed the Lehrjahre as it qualifies or criticizes monolithic or limiting structures within Enlightenment culture—concepts of inheritance, property, legitimacy, propriety, tradition, and notions concerning sexuality. Forces of both authority and transgression are necessary to a vital and balanced system, but authoritative voices in the Lehrjahre, such as those of the characters who dominate books 7 and 8 of the novel, tend to suppress alternative views, to inhibit movement and interchange. The novel itself presents a multitude of voices and grants many of them—even contradictory ones—credibility. It is open to the play of uncertainty, to...