As an outsider to literary theory, I found this book to be an unusually well written and readable lens through which to view a world accessible now only in the dominantly german texts (particularly the pedagogical "Bildungsroman") of the 18th and 19th centuries. Macleod makes visible a highly ambiguous melieu of literary, sexual, and psycho-social contradictions and surprises encoded into the literature of Goetezeit. I can not recommend this book highly enough to scholars in the field, and for interested laypeople from any walk of life. A rare find, a wonderful read.