Dissertation

THE CRITIQUE OF WORDPLAY DURING EARLY GERMAN ROMANTICISM: CRITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF A LITERARY STYLE (POETICS, PUNS, FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL, AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL)

SIMPSON, PETER C

1985

Overview

The Early Romantics considered the rehabilitation of wordplay to be an integral aspect of their revision of eighteenth-century poetics and literary history. The present study compiles and examines the scattered comments in which Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Bernhardi, Tieck, Brentano, and Novalis established the framework of our contemporary understanding of literary wordplay. Rather than subordinating theory to the interpretation of puns in individual works, the study explores the exent to which wordplay became a test case for key issues of pure and applied poetics, including philology, hermeneutics, and language philosophy, as well as translation theory and literary history. Following a preliminary survey of the material evidence and its reception from Jean Paul to the present, chapters two through six treat the poetics of wordplay. Homonymic puns, according to August Wilhelm, exemplify both the poet's unconditional license to manipulate the medium of expression (poiesis) and the function of poetry to renaturalize conventional language ('secondary Cratylism'). The remotivation of buried etymological metaphors, in turn, illustrates the Romantic principles of Witz and Sprachmagic--Friedrich's alternatives to the Enlightenment's abstract rationalism. The ability of wordplay to draw attention to the linguistic dichotomy between sound and sense led Bernhardi to describe it as the most fundamental figure of sound. Friedrich's conception of bi-axial organization in poetry, which presages modern Structuralist theory, stresses the affinity of wordplay to larger textual features, such as irony, plot symmetry, and arabesque form. The puns in his prose, an adaptation of Fichte's etymological style, constitute a moment of 'concrete' critical reflection (Poesie der Poesie). Examples from his fragments, essays, and the novel Lucinde are analyzed in detail. The roots of Early Romantic wordplay in historical philology and translation are the subject of chapters seven through nine. Although well acquainted with classical Greek and Latin wordplay and the native German tradition, the Early Romantics regarded themselves as the heirs of Petrarch, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Shakespeare. The puns in August Wilhelm's Shakespeare translations and Tieck's Don Quixote proved particularly influential both as models and as occasions for extended critical commentary.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Brentano, Clemens (1778-1842) / German literature / Germanic literature / Hardenberg, Georg Philipp Friedrich von (Novalis) (1772-1801) / Petrarca, Francesco (1304-1374) / Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1767-1845) / Tieck, Ludwig (1773-1853)
• ISBN: 9798204185258