How we feel about religion today. Love and love stories as an answer to the Gretchen question - an investigation into Goethe and Honigmann

Like the shaded area belonging equally to two overlapping circles in a Venn diagram, love may be experienced as both essentially religious and as a moment of secular transcendence. Faust exploits this convergence in his famous response to Gretchen. Honigmann both reverses and expands upon this "Faustian accommodation," revealing how love within a modern, secular society might stand in for - and also with - traditional religious affiliation.