The Medicinalization of Mignon

This essay looks at the character of Mignon from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre in light of eighteenth-century medical discourses. It looks both at how the medicine of the time would have regarded her as pathological, but also at how the homeopathic tendencies of the era would also have seen her as a potential “cure” for Wilhelm Meister.

“The Medicinalization of Mignon,” Mignon und ihre Geschwister, ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister (New York:  Lang, 1993) 43-61.