Brown, Jane K. “The Theatrical Mission of the Lehrjahre.” In Goethe's Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium, edited by William J. Lillyman, pp. 69-84. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983.

Studies Goethe's attack on neo-classicism in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.

Cohn, Dorrit. “Wilhelm Meister's Dream: Reading Goethe with Freud.” In German Quarterly 62, No. 4 (Fall 1989): 459-72.

Argues that Goethe endeavors to portray Wilhelm's dream in Book Seven of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahrewith a great degree of psychological realism, and analyzes the dream itself.

Dürr, Volker O. “The Humanistic Ideal and the Representative Public in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.” In Papers on Language and Literature 12, No. 1 (Winter 1976): 36-48.

Contends that Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre represents Goethe's attempt to align the Bildungsroman's focus on the individual with the theme of maintaining the traditional institutions of social life.

Dye, R. Ellis. “Wilhelm Meister and Hamlet, Identity and Difference.” In Goethe Yearbook IV (1992): 67-85.

Interprets the ironic component of Wilhelm Meister's identification with Hamlet.

Flaherty, Gloria. “The Stage-Struck Wilhelm Meister and 18th-Century Psychiatric Medicine.” In MLN 101, No. 3 (April 1986): 493-515.

Highlights the medical theme in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, claiming that Wilhelm's education concerns “the fundamental health problems that must be faced and solved if any given community is to survive and flourish.”

Hatch, Mary Gies. “Mignon: Goethe's Study of Affectional Frustration in Childhood.” In Goethe in the Twentieth Century, edited by Alexej Ugrinsky, pp. 133-38. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Perceives Mignon as the embodiment of suffering and as a foil to Wilhelm, who represents development through striving.

Hoffmeister, Gerhart, ed. Goethes Mignon und ihre Schwestern: Interpretationen und Rezeption. New York: Peter Lang, 1993, 255 p.

Contains three essays in English on the female characters in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.

Jeffers, Thomas. “Forms of Misprison: The Early- and Mid-Victorian Reception of Goethe's Bildungsidee.” In University of Toronto Quarterly 57, No. 4 (Summer 1988): 501-15.

Surveys misreadings of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by such Victorians as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater.

MacLeod, Catriona. “Pedagogy and Androgyny in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In MLN 108, No. 3 (April 1993): 389-426.

Examines the numerous transvestite figures in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and the relationship of these androgyne characters to Wilhelm's path toward maturation.

Marchand, James W. “A Milestone in Hamlet Criticism: Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.” In Goethe as a Critic of Literature, edited by Karl J. Fink and Max L. Baeumer, pp. 140-59. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984.

Probes the psychological understanding of Hamlet Goethe presents in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as a turning point in the criticism of Shakespeare's drama.

Molnár, Géza von. “Goethe's Reading of Kant's ‘Critique of Esthetic Judgment’: A Referential Guide for Wilhelm Meister's Esthetic Education.” In Eighteenth-Century Studies 15, No. 4 (Summer 1982): 402-20.

Traces the influence of Kant's Critique of Judgment on the ethical and esthetic education of Wilhelm Meister.

Saine, Thomas P. “What Time Is It in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre?” In Horizonte: Festschrift für Herbert Lehnert zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Hannelore Mundt, Egon Schwarz, and William J. Lillyman, pp. 52-69. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1990.

Analyzes the central ambiguity of time in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.

———. “Was Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Really Supposed to Be a Bildungsroman?” In Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, edited by James Hardin, pp. 118-41. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.

Questions whether Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre conforms to the precepts of the Bildungsroman, noting Wilhelm's belief in fate, the central role of family, and the relative lack of “harmonious human development” in the work.

Sammons, Jeffrey L. “The Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman, or: What Happened to Wilhelm Meister's Legacy?” Genre 14, No. 2 (Summer 1981): 229-46.

Disputes the assertion that the Bildungsroman was the characteristic subgenre of the nineteenth-century German novel.

Turner, David. “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and German Classicism.” In Periods in German Literature, Vol. II: Texts and Contexts, edited by J. M. Ritchie, pp. 87-114. London: Oswald Wolff, 1969.

Proposes that, despite certain appearances, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre should be considered a work of German Classicism, not Romanticism.

Vazsonyi, Nicholas. “Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: A Question of Talent.” German Quarterly 62, No. 1 (Winter 1989): 39-47.

Ponders the link between Wilhelm and the state of the German theater at the end of the eighteenth century.

Additional coverage of Goethe's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: DISCovering Authors; DISCovering Authors, 3.0; DISCovering Authors: British; DISCovering Authors: Canadian; DISCovering Authors Modules: Dramatists, Most-Studied Authors, Poets;Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 94; Poetry Criticism, Vol. 5; Short Story Criticism, Vol. 38; World Literature Criticism, 1500 to the Present.