L’Iphigénie de Goethe vue par Charles de Villers dans Le Spectateur du Nord (1799)

Abstract

The paper deals with the reception by the Lorraine author Charles de Villers of the classical tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris (Goethe) in the monthly review intended for emigrants, Le Spectateur du Nord. De Villers, whose adopted country was Germany, was indeed a cultural mediator. The contribution seeks to establish whether the accusations of Germanophilia, which he was sometimes taxed with, were justified. Special attention is first given to the potential mentions of Germanophilia in Villers’s article. The second part is dedicated to Villers’s analysis of the defects of the tragedy and to a controversy with a German critic of the review Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste . The third part examines how far Villers turns out to be a perceptive mediator.

Keywords

• Goethe
• de Villers
• Iphigenie in Tauris
• Le Spectateur du Nord
• cultural mediator