The Geographic Imagination of Modernity: Geography, Literature, and Philosophy in German Romanticism by Chenxi Tang

MLR, 105.2, 2010 591 works. Schiller the historian lies behind the efforts to persuade his readers of the historical veracity of these tales. This phenomenon is discussed at some length by Jeffrey High, and again by Nicholas Martin. Gail Hart's analysis of Schillerian types of truth isparticularly enlightening. She differentiates between psychological and historical truth, and between standard individual and universal behavioural features. Schiller's interest in the concept of associating inner qualities and outward ap pearance, a hypothesis put forwardmost famously by Lavater, is familiar from his aesthetic works, and surfaces again here. The protagonist of 'Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre', Christian Wolf, is a physically unattractive man who commits crime after crime, seemingly without motivation. The devout woman, kneeling in prayer in the chapel, is also astonishingly beautiful, as described by the Prince in Der Geisterseher. Dennis Mahoney assembles an interesting series of significant literaryglimpses of a similar kind inhis highly informative discussion of thatwork. Not all the pieces translated for thisvolume are the products of Schiller's original imagination. ?Einmerkwurdiges Beispiel einer weiblichen Rache' was adapted by Schiller from an episode inDiderot's Jacques lefataliste. 'Adaptation' is the right term, rather than 'translation', as Schiller claimed, for reasons that become clear through Otto Johnston's careful comparison with the original. The Chinese frame narrative 'Haoh-Kioh-Tschuen' is at a much further remove from itsorigins than theDiderot selection. Schiller's plan was to rework a German translation by Chris toph Gottlieb von Murr, who worked from an English translation of the Chinese novel. Only this fragmentwas realized, but it too bears the unmistakable stamp of Schiller's favouritemoral and aesthetic themes. These accessible translations are a valuable addition to the Schiller corpus avail able in English, and Francis Lamport's consistently lucid Spiritualist stands out among them. One or two of the essayists make the unnecessary gesture (in this context) of summarizing the plot of the story under discussion. All do their level best to salvage the reputation of these works, some of which Schiller himself disparaged in later life.As readers we are drawn to pay Schiller the compliment of comparing these tales with other examples in the same genre, by Boccaccio or Cervantes, or even, in the case of 'Das philosophische Gesprach', by Plato. The foreword by Lesley Sharpe emphasizes the tension between aesthetic principles and pragmatic concerns thatwas so characteristic of Schiller. As for the influence of Schiller's short prose on those who came after,the editor of this volume offers a useful list including Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Musil, Thomas Mann, and Doblin. Dalhousie University Jane V. Curran The Geographic Imagination of Modernity: Geography, Literature, and Philosophy in German Romanticism. By Chenxi Tang. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2008. x+356 pp. $65. ISBN 978-0-8047-5839-0. In the English-speaking world, and to a large extent inGerman-speaking central Europe too, the attention devoted in 2009 to the dual anniversary of Charles 592 Reviews Darwin (born 1809) and his seminal study On theOrigin of Species (1859) over shadowed two other worthy anniversaries that year, namely the sesquicentenaries of the deaths ofCarl Ritter (born 1779) and Alexander von Humboldt (born 1769), the two fathers ofmodern geographical science. Chenxi Tangs book sets out to re-evaluate these two key figures as icons of complex and widespread intellectual currents around 1800 that reconceptualized the relationship between humankind and the terrestrial space it inhabits as mutual and dynamic, and thus gave rise to the emergence of geographical science as a truly modern discipline alongside other humanities subjects. In the two parts of his study Tang firstly reconstructs the philosophical and artistic developments thatmade this profound qualitative leap possible and then traces its manifestations ingeographical and poetic practice, and also in speculative philosophy, namely in the literary,scientific, and philosophical 'Figurations ofOri ented Space', 'Figurations of Cultural Landscape', and 'Figurations ofGeohistory', to quote the chapter titles of the second part. Tang convincingly demonstrates how various discourses converged to bring this fundamental reorientation about, and the interdisciplinary approach to the history of ideas is a great strength of the book. The common denominator between, for example, topographic cartography on the one extreme...

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