RENATO COSTA LEANDRO

This work analyzes, from an aesthetic-philosophical point of view, Friedrich Schiller's interpretation and criticism of the novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre), published by Goethe between 1795 and 1796, based on the exchange of correspondence between the two authors, with special attention to the letters exchanged between 1794 and 1797. The letters between Schiller and Goethe, as well as revealing the philosophical atmosphere of their time, namely Kantism and the rising Idealism, constitute an important document on the writing and interpretation of the novel in question, whose critical analysis, when applied to what is found in the narrative path of the work, can contribute decisively to understanding its internal movements, insofar as these letters initiate the debate on the aesthetic significance of the work by presenting in speculative language some of its possible meanings. In this way, we will try to present what Schiller means by the aesthetic direction (ästhetische Richtung) of the novel, that is, a complex of aesthetic categories which, aligned with Goethe's creative disposition, point to a certain philosophical significance of the work. This investigation will serve not only as an interpretative study of the novel, but also of part of the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller, thus illuminating the main analyses and criticisms of the Meister carried out by the so-called Goethezeit, such as those of Christian Körner, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Jena's First Romanticism, Schelling, Hegel and contemporary critics such as Franco Moretti and György Lukács.