Scholarly interest in travel literature has increased substantially in recent years. However, there has been a lack of sustained, cohesive commentary on the journey motif in German Romantic culture, particularly its origins and manifestations in literature and philosophy. My doctoral research fills this gap through a philosophically- and historically-informed reading of German Romanticism. The thesis examines 1) the paradigmatic template of the literary journey established by Goethe in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 2) metaphors of movement and mobility within the Idealist philosophy of Kant and Fichte and their role, 3) the manner in which these metaphors migrate into the theoretical and prose writings of Novalis, 4) Tieck’s notion of the sublime and its relevance for the Romantic journey, and 5) the late Romantic satirization of the journey motif within Eichendorff’s prose. Additionally, the thesis serves to show how philosophical discourse of the Enlightenment had reached something of an impasse in its use of the journey motif, with the subject unable to evolve and renew itself beyond the strictures of particular models of subjective cognition. The Romantics thought literary practice was to supersede philosophy and it was mobility in the form of the journey as both metaphor and process, which helped bring about this transition and created a flexible self-authoring and self- renewing model of the subject. The study also recounts a particular history of Romanticism which charts, via the history of the journey, the movement’s youthful idealism, the fear of the pitfalls of human subjectivity, and its eventual self-distanciation through parody.

Ce travail vise à scruter quatre lectures de Kafka dans la philosophie allemande. Pourquoi ces philosophes ont-ils rencontré et interprété Kafka ? La première hypothèse est d’ordre biographique : leurs découvertes de Kafka sont marquées par le sentiment d’une proximité personnelle à l’égard ce qu’il donne à lire. Kafka est l’écrivain d’un certain moment, où le rapport à la langue ne va pas de soi, où l’expérience de l’exil prédomine, et où les mutations historiques rendent les contours de la subjectivité flous. La seconde hypothèse est philosophique : leurs lectures se fondent sur la nécessité de philosopher autrement, afin d’intégrer ces mutations. On ne peut plus penser selon les catégories du sens, de l’identité, de la conscience - mais il faut accepter que le sujet découvre en lui un étranger. Le défi que Kafka dresse devant ces philosophes serait donc de pouvoir « penser la métamorphose ». Celle du sujet, mais aussi celle que subit la philosophie au contact de la littérature. Et enfin, celle que Kafka invente dans l’ensemble de son œuvre, dont nous montrons qu’elle est irriguée par le « devenir-animal ». / We are focusing on studying four readings of Kafka in german philosophy. Why have these philosophers met and interpreted Kafka ? Our first hypothesis is a biographical one : their reading of Kafka’s books are influenced by the feeling of a proximity between his life and their experiences. Kafka represents a crisis : in his work, the language is not innate anymore, experiencing exile is prevailing, the historical mutations affect the concept of subjectivity. The second hypothesis concerns the philosophy itself : because of these mutations, the traditional metaphysical categories of sense or consiousness are obsolete ideas. The subject is becoming a stranger. Kafka is challenging philosophers to « think out the metamorphosis », the subject’s metamorphosis, the philosophy’s metamorphosis, and finally, the one Kafka invented, which is everpresent in his works, the notion of a « becoming-animal ».