"The Spectacular Moment is a beautifully produced volume, and it is evident that Wellbery has crafted each sentence with remarkable care and elegance. As with all important contributions to the field, there are points he raises and interpretive turns he takes that can and need to be challenged.... [Wellbery's] discussion of Goethe's early lyric should form a vital part of any graduate seminar on the topic, as well as of course being a cornerstone for future analysis."—Eighteenth-Century Current Bibliography

"Wellbery provides a fresh understanding of Goethe's new poetic discourse, analyzing its semiological, discursive, and hermeneutic features. In the process, he relates Goethe's lyric poetry to the entirety of his writings, establishing links and filiations that have not previously been noted. All this is done in the broad context of historical comparison and in dialogue with previous scholarship."—Ernst Behler, University of Washington

David E. Wellbery is the Kurrelmeyer Professor of German at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Lessing's Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, l984), and the co-editor of several collections of essays.