The current research status of "William Meister's Roaming Age" as an archival novel was discussed, with a focus on analyzing the concept of "archives" in the principles and mechanisms of novel text construction. Early research, such as Folke Noyhouse's "archival fiction," focused on the narrator's perspective, while Schr ö dinger Schneider's "archival poetics" analyzed knowledge recoding. Martin Bates applied the concept of archival fiction to 'The Age of Roaming', emphasizing archives as the basis for narrative and proposing archival style narration and writing. Stefan Viller explored the relationship between Goethe's self archiving and archival techniques in his novels. The chapter also covers Moritz Basler's discussion on the materiality of archives, as well as the importance of writing and collection as cultural techniques in novels. By analyzing the original scene at the beginning of the novel, this paper explores the significance of writing and collection in text construction, as well as their role in human cultural memory.

1、 The Collection of Novel Characters and the 'Pleasure of Writing' (Schreibseligkeit) [17]

Explored the writing and collecting behaviors of characters in William Meister's Roaming Age, and how these behaviors are reflected in the textual structure of the novel. The novel portrays individual self positioning and social roles through the writing activities of characters, such as letter correspondence and shorthand. Meanwhile, the characters' collecting habits, such as collecting stones, fruits, geological specimens, etc., correspond to the complex textual structure of the novel. The small slate in the novel symbolizes the inheritance between father and son and the self-expression of individual growth. Overall, the writing and collection behavior of characters not only reveals their personalities and desires, but also provides a foundation for the multi-level narrative and themes of the novel.

2、 Fictitious Archive: An Aggregated Text Construction Method

The Roaming Age of William Meister integrates different literary genres such as letters, mystery novels, fairy tales, diaries, and poetry through an aggregated text construction approach, forming a narrative structure with distinct interjective features. The history of novel writing shows that Goethe published prose and poetry fragments over the past 30 years, and Ekman and Kotta Publishing also participated in the arrangement of the novel structure. Goethe utilized the openness of the text brought about by this structure, gaining more creative freedom and turning his own translated works into fictional works of others. Viller proposed the concepts of "collective writer identity" and "collective text", emphasizing the author's death and the loss of narrative subject authority brought about by Goethe's "archival fiction" writing style. This writing style forms a polyphonic narrative, which is characterized by incompleteness or even breakage, in line with the characteristics of archives themselves. In the text structure of 'The Age of Roaming', transitions between chapters and scenes are abandoned, and there are 'blind motifs', isolated semantic fragments, abrupt perspective shifts, and quotes from unknown sources. This writing 'loophole' stems from the 'unfinished' nature of the archive itself. The purpose of the incompleteness and loopholes in the text is to attract readers to enter the archives and search for connections on their own, including intertextual connections with 'The Age of Learning'. The spatial characteristics of archival writing are highlighted, and William's trip to the Macalia estate is known as the 'journey into archives'. The archival writing of novels finds correspondence at the fictional level, and conversely, reading archival documents at the fictional level can also provide insights on how to read and interpret archival novels. Archives are the 'place of action' where readers can extract a text from a novel to read individually. The function of "Roaming Age" as an archival novel is reflected in multiple aspects such as "storage, circulation, and extraction". The fictional archives not only bring about changes in the structure of the novel text, but also present readers with different requirements than before. Memory and new cognition stored in text through writing and collection need to be reactivated through continuous reading and discussion. What is at stake here is no longer simply the plot of the story or the fate of the characters, but the problem domain arising from various connections.

3、 Writing as a Problem - Taking William's Letter to Natalia as an Example

Explored the evolution and function of the book credit novel in William Meister's Roaming Age. William's letter to Natalia not only recorded his emotional journey, but also foreshadowed his itinerary, becoming the foundation of the novel. These letters go beyond inner monologues and contain reflections, making writing itself and its communicative function problematic. Letters reflect the difference between written and oral expression, where physical absence is seen as a defect, while writing is seen as a substitute for emotion and reason. Letters make up for the shortcomings of oral expression, storing and conveying ideas, but they can also lead to misunderstandings. The fourth letter showcases the complexity of writing through literary techniques, transforming crabs into metaphorical symbols that conceal conflicts between civilization and primitiveness, natural temptations and normative fears. Writing is a process of collection and accumulation, different from oral expression, requiring sentence construction and organization. The letters in "The Age of Roaming" are no longer traditional love letters, but rather the writer's observations and reflections on themselves and the world. The privacy of letters as a medium of communication has been weakened, and they have entered a larger circle of communication. Letters provide a space for discussing writing issues, transforming metaphors into self metaphors and reflection into self reflection. Goethe chose archival writing, turning novels into a writing experiment, contemplating history, society, culture, art, the living conditions and paths of humans in the machine age, as well as issues of love, marriage, father and son, education, and more. The so-called 'archival novel' is an open collective text, where linear narration no longer exists, and the authority of the author and narrator is replaced by the writing situation. What awaits exploration is the intertextual and semantic connections between different textual tubers stored in the 'archives'.