This dissertation traces the development of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's attempts to find solutions to what he perceived to be the crisis of meaning in his time. I focus primarily on Hofmannsthal's fictional letters and poetological reflections from the post-lyrical phase of his career, also touching on his final drama and political speeches. In the 1990s semiotic, structuralist, and poststructuralist studies of Hofmannsthal's texts allowed critics to uncover the more radically modern dimension of his creative process and work, making possible a poetological turn in the scholarship, with critics becoming far more interested in the poetics and aesthetics of Hofmannsthal's writings. Thanks to this work, a very different image of Hofmannsthal has appeared - one that attempts to overcome the common prejudice against the author as an elitist and cultural conservative who was out of step with his time. This dissertation participates in the latest approach to Hofmannsthal's work inasmuch as it largely focuses on Hofmannsthal's self-reflexive poetological writings from the Erfundene Gespräche und Briefe and on the author's intermedial search for a language that can counteract the reification of language in a positivistic age. The central argument of this dissertation is that the crises of language, of perception, of experience and of identity that Hofmannsthal repeatedly represents in his work fundamentally express a crisis of authorship. Hofmannsthal's preoccupation with these crises reflects his increasing uncertainty about the role of the poet in a modern democratic age, in which not only the social hierarchies but also the hierarchies of knowledge are leveled. I argue that Hofmannsthal radically destabilizes the role of the poet by questioning whether the poet has a necessary role in interpreting experience for the many. But I conclude by suggesting that in an effort to keep this question alive in an age of democratic skepticism about the poet's vocation, Hofmannsthal sees the need to reassert at a rhetorical level the poet's privileged position.

Este trabalho tem como objeto a investigação da poética de Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen através da série No Poema, sétima parte do livro Geografia (1967). A poeta joga com a crosta terrestre e a crosta da linguagem. Notamos elementos comuns entre sua poética e a de seus pares, por exemplo: a poeta denuncia a morte dos deuses e a crise da linguagem, há o desaparecimento elocutório do sujeito, o silêncio está presente como elemento da criação, a poeta persegue o \"ostinato rigore\" que Paul Valéry retomou. A poesia de Sophia tem pontos coincidentes com a de Hölderlin, enquanto poeta que vê a linguagem como casa do ser, com a de João Cabral, o \"ostinato rigore\", o silêncio como elemento da criação poética e o desaparecimento do sujeito depois da criação, com a de Francis Ponge, o gosto pelo concreto, por nomear precisamente os objetos, com a de Paul Celan, a síntese, com a de Fernando Pessoa, o paradigma da tradição literária portuguesa moderna. Essa constatação se deu a partir da nossa leitura dos poemas selecionados para a análise. / This assignment aims the investigation over Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen poetics throughout the series \"No Poema\", in the 7th part of the book entitled Geografia (1967). The poet plays up with the earthy and language crust. We observe common elements between her poetics and of her pairs. For instance: the poet reveals the Gods death as well as the language crisis. The subject has a discursive fading, being the silence present as the creative element. The poet chases the \"ostinato rigore\" that Paul Valéry had recaptured. Sophia\'s poetry has correspondent points with Hölderlin´s work while considering both poets: the language as the dwelling of a being. Similar to João Cabral is the \"ostinato rigore\", where silence is perceived as the poetic creative element and the fading of the subject occurs after its creation. Together with Francis Ponge, to entitle precisely the objects, lays the fondness of the concrete. The synthesis is with Paul Celan\'s, and finally the Portuguese literary tradition with Fernando Pessoa. This evidence has emerged from the perusal of the poems selected to this investigation.

Este trabalho tem como objeto a investigação da poética de Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen através da série No Poema, sétima parte do livro Geografia (1967). A poeta joga com a crosta terrestre e a crosta da linguagem. Notamos elementos comuns entre sua poética e a de seus pares, por exemplo: a poeta denuncia a morte dos deuses e a crise da linguagem, há o desaparecimento elocutório do sujeito, o silêncio está presente como elemento da criação, a poeta persegue o \"ostinato rigore\" que Paul Valéry retomou. A poesia de Sophia tem pontos coincidentes com a de Hölderlin, enquanto poeta que vê a linguagem como casa do ser, com a de João Cabral, o \"ostinato rigore\", o silêncio como elemento da criação poética e o desaparecimento do sujeito depois da criação, com a de Francis Ponge, o gosto pelo concreto, por nomear precisamente os objetos, com a de Paul Celan, a síntese, com a de Fernando Pessoa, o paradigma da tradição literária portuguesa moderna. Essa constatação se deu a partir da nossa leitura dos poemas selecionados para a análise. / This assignment aims the investigation over Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen poetics throughout the series \"No Poema\", in the 7th part of the book entitled Geografia (1967). The poet plays up with the earthy and language crust. We observe common elements between her poetics and of her pairs. For instance: the poet reveals the Gods death as well as the language crisis. The subject has a discursive fading, being the silence present as the creative element. The poet chases the \"ostinato rigore\" that Paul Valéry had recaptured. Sophia\'s poetry has correspondent points with Hölderlin´s work while considering both poets: the language as the dwelling of a being. Similar to João Cabral is the \"ostinato rigore\", where silence is perceived as the poetic creative element and the fading of the subject occurs after its creation. Together with Francis Ponge, to entitle precisely the objects, lays the fondness of the concrete. The synthesis is with Paul Celan\'s, and finally the Portuguese literary tradition with Fernando Pessoa. This evidence has emerged from the perusal of the poems selected to this investigation.

Beginning with the 80-s of the 19th century, literature starts to increasingly take language as a problem. First of all, claims of the language for reflecting the truth are questioned, and, consequently, it is revaluated as an instrument of cognition (mostly, negatively). Very often texts, related to a language conundrum, may contain either anti-religions argumentation, or an active use of imagery, tinged with religion, or Biblical symbology. In this work, the interrelation between religiousness, reflected in the text, and its approach to the problematics of the language are investigated. In the shadow of the crisis of the language of literature modernism, such topics as the process of language secularization, language origin, and the crisis of cognition and of a person have also been touched upon. As exemplified by F. Mauthner, W. Benjamin, H. Hofmannsthal и C. Mierendorff, different concepts of the language and ways out of the crisis, offered by them, are presented. Also, their way to interact with religiousness and and mysticism was taken into account. In the result of the research, a certain tendency has been tapped: in case when a language is approached as an instrument that has no relation to mysticism, it shows its incapacity as an instrument of cognition (Mauthner). If a language is viewed...