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This thesis considers how Kleist and Hoffmann’s fiction might be considered as responding to the perceived shortcomings of enlightenment. The two writers, despite the barriers of literary categorisations, have a striking affinity in their sense that notions of truth and knowledge are intertwined with social and political agendas, rather than forming part of some natural teleology. The thesis breaks new ground in viewing the texts within a more expansive discourse context as literary interventions within a broad, cross-society engagement with enlightenment, in its various streams and factions. The texts studied, I argue, represent thought experiments, not merely reflecting and re-articulating the influences of literary peers and historically significant events, but instead testing the real-world application of key enlightenment ideas. The driving force for this thesis is the need to locate their work more rigorously in relation to enlightenment thought of their time than has previously been attempted. This is not so much a question of retrieving past influences, as one of viewing their work as being in dialogue with contemporary thought. Moving away from attempts using Kleist’s letters to theorise the relation between Kleist and Kant, this investigation instead turns to aspects of Kant’s philosophy to illuminate the texts. Hoffmann’s relationship to enlightenment, too, is explored beyond the prism of Romanticism. Taking a more comparative approach than previous work on the two writers, I identify not only thematic commonalities, but also a parallel aesthetic, in which multiple narratives coexist and where ‘truth’ is manufactured by the dominance of one particular narrative. The notion of 'MÃ1⁄4ndigkeit', central to Kant’s famous definition of 'Aufklärung' offers a useful guiding concept for the investigation and captures the emancipatory promise of self-realisation and the positive trajectory of human progress at the heart of the miscellany of moral and political theories and philosophies collectively known as ‘enlightenment’. The latter refers not to the historical period, but rather to a process of intellectual emancipation and an assemblage of ideals and values. As an intellectual movement, enlightenment was not, as is often assumed, monolithic, but encompasses conflicting notions of reason, freedom, and how its goals were to be achieved. Not only are the certainty and consequences of this intellectual emancipation evaluated in the texts, but I have also identified a radical questioning of the paradigms of thought which condition our understanding of narratives. Both Kleist and Hoffmann’s texts are narratively complex, often with shifts in focalisation, jumps in time, occasionally, figures whose identity changes leave the reader uncertain whether they are dealing with more than one character, and depictions of events which resist clarification through conventional understandings of time, space and causality. This project seeks to reconcile these ‘blind spots’ with a broader critique of enlightenment, in which absolute knowledge is shown to be illusory and truth simply reflective of constellations of power. The spatiotemporal and causal frameworks foundational to rational understanding and used to make sense of the world are revealed to be inadequate.

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Robert Schumann (1810-1856) var en tysk romantisk tonsättare som främst har skrivit många verk för piano och sång. Han var en känslosam person med en rik inre värld, som trots många motgångar i livet alltid fann hopp i kärleken eller i fantasivärlden. Syftet med detta arbete var att utforska grunden till Schumanns musikskapande och vad som har lett honom till att komponera på det sättet han gjorde. Genom att nå en djupare förståelse för bakgrunden till hans kreativa skapandet har jag som pianist kunnat arbeta med och tolka verket Fantasiestücke Op. 12 på ett sätt som tar hänsyn till Schumanns livsöde. Studien genomfördes metodiskt med hjälp av olika litteraturstudier samt internetkällor. För instuderingen av verket Fantasiestücke Op. 12 användes noter av G. Henle-förlaget. Studiens resultat visade, vilken stor roll litteraturen, kärleken till Clara Wieck och Schumanns psykiska ohälsa spelade för skapandet av hans pianoverk Fantasiestücke Op. 12. Verket skrevs under sommaren 1837, en tidsperiod, där han var mycket fascinerade av romantikens stora författare E.T.A. Hoffmann. Samtidigt var det en tid där han började drabbas av olika sjukdomar som ledde till en signifikant handskada och förstärkt psykisk ohälsa. Det var också fasen då han kämpade för att förverkliga sin kärlek med Clara Wieck.

Diese Examensarbeit untersucht die Verbindung zwischen Die unendliche Geschichte von Michael Ende und der deutschen Epoche Romantik. Dies wird anhand einer textimmanenten Analyse von Die unendliche Geschichte und E.T.A Hoffmanns romantisches Werk Der goldne Topf durchgeführt.

S’appuyant sur les théories esthétiques des frères Schlegel, de Novalis et de Schelling, ce travail s’attache à analyser les discours esthétiques et scientifiques dans Les Frères de Saint-Sérapion d’E.T.A. Hoffmann et à étudier dans quelle mesure et jusqu’à quel point l’écrivain se réapproprie les réflexions de ces premiers romantiques et s’en distancie. Confronté au philistinisme, aux malveillances d’autrui et à ses démons intérieurs, l’artiste sérapiontique poursuit un idéal tant social que psychique. Rêveurs, fous, enfants ou encore sous influence magnétique, les personnages hoffmanniens sont tous en quête de reconnaissance et d’identité. Polyformes, polymorphes et hétérogènes, centrés sur l’interaction artistique, le travail de création et la réception, Les Frères de Saint-Sérapion créent une sorte d’« œuvre d’art totale » avant la lettre où se mêlent aussi bien les sciences que les arts. / Using the aesthetic theories of the Schlegel brothers, Novalis and Schelling, this thesis examines aesthetic and scientific discourse as it appears in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Serapion Brethren and considers to what extent Hoffmann appropriates early Romantic thought or distances himself from it. Faced with the philistinism and maliciousness of others and with his own interior demons, the Serapiontic artist pursues both a social and psychic ideal. Dreamers, madmen, children or those who are under the influence of magnetidm, Hoffmann’s characters are all seeking recognition and an identity. Polymorphous and heterogeneous, centered on artistic interaction and on the work of creation and reception, The Serapion Brethren is a type of ‘total work of art’ before its time in which the sciences and the arts come together.

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