The Real and the Imaginary in the literary works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Joseph Eichendorff, and Vladimir Odoevsky
Open Access
- Author:
- Rozanov, Vladislav Nikolayevich
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 04, 2011
- Committee Members:
- Daniel Purdy/ Martina Kolb, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Daniel Leonhard Purdy, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Dr Martina Kolb, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Adrian Johannes Wanner, Committee Member
Ursula Bettina Brandt, Committee Member - Keywords:
- German and Russian literature of Romanticism
literary space - Abstract:
- This dissertation focuses on German and Russian literature of Romanticism (1785 – 1837) and presents an analysis of the aesthetic values and literary functions of the imaginary and realistic spaces in the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, J. Eichendorff, and V. Odoevsky. In the early 19th century, the literary interest in reasoning as the leitmotiv of the cultural movement in the age of Enlightenment shifted to the cryptic area of the human soul and its influence on individual behavior. In the absence of modern knowledge of psychology, writers of the time speculated that the human behavior was subject of influence of mystic power of nature. This provided perfect conditions for the development of certain literary themes. Among these themes, the authors of Romanticism explored the reciprocal interaction between the day-to-day reality and the idealized, overwhelming, and threatening world of supernatural. When reality is not perfect, where does our imagination lead us? Is it an extraordinary fantasy or even sublime that one can barely comprehend? Do we abandon all the conventional ideas about the perfect day-to-day life and its aesthetic demands? Or is our fantasy only another perfect version of the everyday idyll? Should one give up reason as a supreme force of our intellect in favor of intuition and imagination? In their major works, authors such as Hoffmann, Eichendorff, and Odoevsky answer these questions in their unique literary manner. Two short stories The Mines at Falun (1819) and Sylph (1837) as well as the novel Of the Life of a Good-For-Nothing (1823) provide a rich context for measuring literary values of the romantic supernatural world and determining their connection to reality. Beyond traditionally opposed spacial characteristics in the literary period, this research advances the fantasy-reality-relationship as an optimal model for categorizing a work of Romanticism from the point of author’s literary goals and intentions. This dissertation proposes the following: when an author highlights imaginary objects it reveals an author’s emphasis on the protagonist’s inner world and psychology. The regulation of common sense, behavioral code, self-consciousness, creative urge, identity, and madness become central objects of these works. On the other hand, when an author underlines the dominance of the realistic space indicates an author’s focus on depiction of the protagonists’s external surrounding reality. Socio-cultural, political, and philosophical ideas are the central objects of literary examination in these works. The comparative analysis of three texts of Hoffmann, Eichendorff, and Odoevsky aims to expand previos work on the interaction between imaginary and realistic spaces in the literature of Romanticism.