Section One This Section opens with a short historical survey of what previous scholarship has revealed with regard to kaabe's preoccupation with questions of reality and illusion, and attempts to show that, several excellent specialised studies notwithstanding, there still remain substantial areas which have until now been subjected to little or no serious examination; no broadly-based study of the issues involved has as yet appeared. The main aims of the present study are then set out, as follows: to isolate the central elements in Raabe's attitude to and portrayal of the possibilities and limitations of human perception; to examine the relationship of these separate elements and to establish what underlying patterns, if any, are involved; and to make some contribution towards an assessment of the significance of this aspect for Raabe's work as a whole and towards a consideration of Raabe's position in literary and historical terms. The methods and structure of the present study are outlined briefly at the end of this Section.

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Three defects of Tieck criticism are: excessive use of biographical-psychological information; excessive use of contemporary cultural evidence to deny Tieck's originality* and the divorce of characters or motifs from their contexts. A new interpretation of Love11 shows Tieck's reaction to his intellectual environment. Many lesser works are shown to have strong connections with Love11. The works of the 179°s contain both advocacy and fear of the ideals of beauty and of ordinary life; some works show unconvincing attempts to equate these ideals. Tieck's skill as a psychological writer is demonstrated. A common belief in Tieck's nostalgia for the Middle Ages is disproved. It is shown that the extent of several alleged influences on Tieck - BtJhme, Solger, Raumer and the Gothic novel - has often been exaggerated. Tieck's original reaction to the AufklMrung and his comprehensive view of it are emphasised. • I ' Shakespeare and Cervantes are revealed as the most important influences. The value of Phantasus is limited to its indication of Tieck's increasing socio-economic interests and its adumbration of his novella-theory. The latter is shown to be didactic, superficial and relatively unimportant. The novellas generally show the same combination of advocacy of beauty as an ideal and suspicion of its distorting influence if misused. Tieck's dislike of industrial society, of the mass-production of literature, of ideological interference with literature, and of totalitarianism is shown to have a mainly aesthetic basis. His greatest characterisations show that he equated the search for ideological truth with the search for an aesthetic ideal. The independence of his creative force from his more conscious interests is demonstrated. It is suggested that his politico-social views were more radical than often supposed. Vittoria Accorombona is shown to be the culmination of many of his ideas and of his art.

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Our study of Jean Paul's style and aesthetic thought is arranged chronologically because we have attempted to show that Jean Paul is an important figure in the transition from the "Aufklärung" to Romanticism. In the first chapter, "Jean Paul and the Eighteenth Century", we have shown that Jean Paul was influenced by the "Aufklärung" attitude to wit and that his style contains many rationalistic techniques common in the century. On closer examination however we saw that Jean Paul adapted the rationalistic principle of wit, and by associating this principle with the personality of the writers and thus liberating it from reason, he laid the basis for the transformation of wit into the poetic principle of phantasy. Similarly the rationalistic structure of his early satires is seen to be misleading, for Jean Paul in fact destroys the lucidity of "Aufklärung" prose by insisting on the active cooperation of the reader in literature. Even whilst writing rational satires therefore Jean Paul appeal's to be sceptical about the power of reason and of language to understand or convey fully the complexities of life. The second chapter, "Jean Paul and Pre-Romanticism", examines the development of these irrational elements in Jean Paul's style and aesthetic thought in the 1790's. Like the Romantics later however, Jean Paul aims at synthesis rather than at the clear-cut triumph of feeling over reason. Consequently complexities and contradictions arise both in Jean Paul's style and in his aesthetic thought. Rationalistic and biblical, humorous and sentimental techniques combine together to produce a colourful but demanding style. In his aesthetic thought Jean Paul appears at times to believe completely in the autonomy of the poetic imagination proclaimed by Hamannj on the other occasions the pull of the "Aufklärung" makes itself felt, particularly in the figure of the ageing Herder, and Jean Paul insists that art should serve a moral purpose. The confusion in Jean Paul's style and aesthetic thought in this period is the result of his attempt to combine incompatible elements in preromantic thought. This confusion is the cause of Jean Paul's ambivalent relationship with the Romantics discussed in the third chapter. The Romantics violently attacked those aspects of Jean Paul's writing which were connected with his sentimentality; at the same time they encouraged the hesitant Jean Paul to place complete trust in poetic phantasy. The relationship of Jean Paul with the Romantics therefore brought out into the open the contradictions inherent in his aesthetic thought in the 1790's. But since the personal influence of Herder was less strong after Jean Paul left Weimar in 1800, Jean Paul began to value the achievements of the early Romantics increasingly highly and at the same time to attack the outdated Berlin representatives of the "Aufklärung". Jean Paul's style and aesthetic thought contain many conflicting elements in each of the three periods considered. But despite this he was successful in synthesising different literary traditions and in creating a style which was extremely effective in making his readers think. As a transitional figure between the "Aufklärung" and Romanticism Jean Paul presents in his writings and in his personality the violent clash of two incompatible outlooks. The tensions and confusions that result from this clash are mirrored in the extraordinary style of his works.

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