Dennis F. Mahoney 
The Literature of German Romanticism 

Sharply focused essays on the most significant aspects of German Romanticism.


This volume of sharply focused essays by an international team of scholars deals not only with the most significant literary, philosophical, and cultural aspects of German Romanticism — one of the most influential, albeit highlycontroversial movements in the history of German literature — but also with the history and status of scholarship on the literature of the period. The introduction and first section establish an overall framework by placing German Romanticism within a European context that includes its English counterpart. Goethe and Schiller are considered, as are the Jena Romantics. The second section is organized according to the traditional distinctions between epic, dramatic, and lyric modes of writing, while realizing that particularly in the Romantic novel, there was an attempt to blend these three. A final group of essays focuses on German literary Romanticism’s relation to other aspects of German culture: folklore studies, politics, psychology, natural science, gender presentation and representation, music, and visual art.


Contributors: Gerhard Schulz, Arnd Bohm, Richard Littlejohns, Gerhart Hoffmeister, Ulrich Scheck, Claudia Stockinger, Bernadette Malinowski, Fabian Lampart, Klaus Peter, Gabriele Rommel, Martha B. Helfer, Kristina Muxfeldt, Beate Allert, Paul Bishop and R. H. Stephenson, Nicholas Saul


Dennis F. Mahoney is Professor of German and Director of the European Studies Program at the University of Vermont.

Table of Content

From ‘romantick’ to ‘Romantic’: The Genesis of German Romanticism in Late-Eighteenth-Century Europe – Gerhard Schulz

Goethe and the Romantics – Arnd Bohm

Early Romanticism – Richard Littlejohns

From Goethe’s
Wilhelm Meister to anti-
Meister Novels: The Romantic Novel between Tieck’s
William Lovell and Hoffmann’s
Kater Murrand Hoffmann’s
Kater Murr – Gerhart Hoffmeister

Tales of Wonder and Terror: Short Prose of the German Romantics – Ulrich Scheck

The Romantic Drama: Tieck, Brentano, Arnim, Fouqué, and Eichendorff – Claudia Stockinger

German Romantic Poetry in Theory and Practice: The Schlegel Brothers, Schelling, Tieck, Novalis, Eichendorff, Brentano, and Heine Eichendorff, Brentano, and Heine – Bernadette Malinowski

The Turn to History and the
Volk: Brentano, Arnim, and the Grimm Brothers – Fabian Lampart

History and Moral Imperatives: The Contradictions of Political Romanticism – Klaus Peter

German Romanticism and Natural Science – Habil. Gabriele Rommel

The Romantic Preoccupation with Musical Meaning – Kristina Muxfeldt

Romanticism and the Visual Arts – Beate Allert

Goethe’s Late Verse (this essay has two authors) – and Paul Bishop

The Reception of German Romanticism in the Twentieth Century – N.D.B. Saul

About the author

Paul Bishop is Professor of German and Head of Department of German at the University of Glasgow.