Practicing Progress: The Promise and Limitations of Enlightenment: Festschrift for John A. McCarthy

Product Description
The essay reads an Enlightened and modern critique of progress in Mozart's Cosí fan tutte. With numerous references to other operas and texts, and with a storyline that emphasizes inevitable, yet mutable aspects of human nature, Cosí presents an ambivalent picture of the ways in which even the most disinterested and best-informed attitude toward the past can affect the future. At the same time, the opera seems to embrace the notion of freedom of choice without rejecting tradition or repetition. The essay also comments on the performance of Cosí in Zurich in 2000, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who often works with authentic period instruments.
Review
a well-rounded summary of all directions into which the Enlightenment spreads, its influences on all kinds of social spheres, and a variety of interpretative approaches in:
Focus on German Studies, Vol. 15, 2008"

..".a well-rounded summary of all directions into which the Enlightenment spreads, its influences on all kinds of social spheres, and a variety of interpretative approaches..." in:
Focus on German Studies, Vol. 15, 2008
About the Author
Richard E. Schade (Cincinnati) has served in various editorial capacities with the
Lessing Yearbook / Jahrbuch since 1975. His published research focuses on the literary culture of Germany between Luther and Lessing, with ancillary interests in Goethe, German-American Studies, and G. Grass.

Dieter Sevin is Professor and Chair at Vanderbilt University. His teaching and research interests have focused primarily on 19th- and 20th-century German literature, with a special interest in German exile literature and GDR-literature. His more recent book publications deal with the East German novel, Exile Literature, and George Buchner.