Analysis of the novellas of the German Romantic writer and composer,focusing on the issues of art and the artist.The German Romantic writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) - perhaps best known to the English-speaking world through his Nutcracker and through Jacques Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann - struggled toconvince his predominantly bourgeois public of the merits of art and literature. Not surprisingly,many of his most important novellas are bound up with the dilemmas of art and the challenges faced by the Romantic artist,and itis these Künstlernovellen that are the focus of this study. Birgit Rderargues that Hoffmann's artists are not simply individuals who create works of art,but rather figures through whom the author explores the predicamentof those who reject the conventional world of bourgeois reality and seek to assert the claims of the imagination in a world dominated by prosaic rationalism. Contrary to previous scholars however,Rder demonstrates that Hoffmann's novellas clearly warn against a view of art as an autonomous aesthetic realm cut off from the world of reality. This is particularly apparent in Rder's analysis of gender relations in Hoffmann's oeuvre - especially the relationship between (male) artist and (female) muse - which underlines the extent to which art,literature,and the imagination are inseparably bound up with the prevailing social reality. The novellas that are given extensive consideration are Das Frulein von Scuderi,Der Sandmann,Die Jesuiterkirche in G.,Die Fermate,Der Artushof,Don Juan,Das Sanctus,and Rat Krespel.Birgit Rder teaches German language and literature at the University of Reading,UK.
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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer LtdISBN: 9781571132710Number of pages: 207Dimensions: 229 x 152 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
The book serves as a helpful,well-researched introduction and resource for Hoffmann's short fiction....succeeds as an introduction to the many texts in which Hoffmann's artists struggle in the Romantic conflict that pits the ideal against the mundane.(Rder's) chapter on'Don Juan'is...the intellectual apex of the book. Here Rder dazzles us with the most sinuous extrapolation of various dialectical oppositions in the text,all generated by Mozart's music....Following a well documented introduction to the critical literature on Hoffmann,Rder provides a precise and clear analysis... of what she terms'the romantic dilemma.Rder's book offers a fine introduction to the tales of Hoffmann for those with a reading knowledge of German.... (It) is both a solid contribution and an invitation for more work on an author too often neglected.
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