delit1-1, Exercise 2: A plan to test a myth

Model answer (myth: "Goethe is the whole of German literature"; check the details):

Question: what did Goethe write, and what did others do differently?

Evidence to look for:
1. A list of Goethe's works by genre (poetry, drama, novels, science, autobiography), from a scholarly edition or a standard biography.
2. Contemporaries and rivals: Schiller, Lessing, the Romantics, Buchner and Heine, and how each differs in subject and style.
3. Reception: how Goethe was read at different times, and who challenged his dominance.
4. Translations: which of his works reached English and which writers did not.

Where: literary histories, the Goethe house museums, translators' prefaces, library catalogues.

Likely result: Goethe was central and influential but not the whole, and the claim is a simplification that fits the nineteenth-century idea of a national poet.