In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Fritz Breithaupt discuss a segment from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel, Elective Affinities. That segment is entitled “The Two Strange Children,” and it was translated by George Barry in 1885. Elective Affinities was Goethe’s third novel, published in 1809. Fritz Breithaupt is Professor of German in the Department of Francophone, Italian and Germanic studies, and also Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his other duties at Penn, Breithaupt directs the Experimental Humanities Laboratory. In the course of his career, Breithaupt has produced a substantial and highly influential body of work in both German and English across the fields of Germanic studies, empathy studies, and narrative studies. Three of his books include: Jenseits der Bilder: Goethes Politik der Wahrnehmung (in English, Beyond Images: Goethe’s Politics of Perception), The Dark Sides of Empathy, and The Narrative Brain. Breithaupt’s most recent book is on the first-time experience and transformative experience, which has been published in German but not yet in English.
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