Hilda M. Brown Libri

A comprehensive investigation of Hoffmann's "Serapiontic Principle" and what it implies for his oeuvre.Critics have long sought to elucidate the multilayered texts of E. T. A. Hoffmann by applying to them a particular set of theories and ideas that Hoffmann himself subsumed under the heading of the "Serapiontic Principle." This principle, which Hoffmann expounded in his collection of tales Die Serapionsbrüder, involves a complex intersection of the artist's faculties of imagination and perception.However, Hoffmann's mode of presenting his theory presents an unusual rather than the usual form of an essay or treatise, he adopts a fictional framework, complete with a set of "characters"; this in turn sets up a number of perspectives on the theory itself. This combination of literary and theoretical elements presents a severe challenge to critics, and not surprisingly there has been little agreement about what the "principle" actually entails or its wider relevance. With the principle as prime focus, this book provides detailed analysis of a broadly based selection of Hoffmann's texts, both theoretical and literary. It offers new perspectives on his narrative invention and the range of his theoretical interests, thus redefining his place at the forefront of German Romanticism.Hilda Meldrum Brown is Professor of German at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford.

This study offers a powerful new perspective on Kleist, emphasizing the visual and theatrical features of Kleist's work, alongside his familiar and all-pervasive irony and paradox. His complex dramas and prose tales are here approached principally via literary--or pre-literary-- features displayed in Kleist's early letters.

Wagner and Brecht are seemingly opposed in their approach to drama, music, and visual representation, the former believing in the integration of these different elements in the "Gesamtkunstwerk", the other in their separation. However, they share common ground in their sophisticated use ofleitmotivic networks, a bridging device for Wagner who builds onto its verbal and semantic foundation a unique and complex musical language. Both use the device to explain and evaluate a dramatic action as it unfolds, i.e. as a major form of perspectival commentary. Brown discusses the paradoxthat Wagner's theory can shed light on Brecht's dramatic practice, since Brecht's own thematical concerns focus almost exclusively on the gestic and disjunctive perspectives identified with epic theatre.

Kleist's tragedy Penthesilea is approached from various angles, including the biographical and literary-historical one, to place it in the context of German drama ca. 1800. A detailed critical analysis is provided in which emphasis is laid on imagery, style and techniques of presentation of the tragic issues. On this basis the view is advanced that in Penthesilea Kleist succeeded in solving the problems which had prevented his achieving a «grand tragedy» with «Robert Guiscard», by creating a unique substitute for Choric commentary in the form of «gradualistic» commentaries on the action, strategically presented by certain characters, principally by means of key-images.