This collection of essays addresses a very broad range of E. T. A. Hoffmanns most significant works, examining them through the lens of transgression. Transgression bears relevance to Hoffmanns life and professions in three ways. First, his official career path was that of jurisprudence; he was active as a lawyer, a judge and eventually as one of the most important magistrates in Berlin. Second, his personal life was marked by numerous conflicts with political and social authorities. Seemingly no matter where he went, he experienced much chaos, grief and impoverishment in leading his always precarious existence. Third, his works explore characters and concepts beyond the boundaries of what was considered aesthetically acceptable. Normal bourgeois existence was often juxtaposed to the lives of criminals, sinners, and other deviants, both within the spaces of the known world as well as in supernatural realms. He, perhaps more than any other author of the German Romantic movement, regularly portrayed the dark side of existence in his works, including unconscious psychological phenomena, nightmares, somnambulism, vampirism, mesmerism, Doppelgänger, and other forms of transgressive behavior. It is the intention of this volume to provide a new look at Hoffmanns very diverse body of work from numerous perspectives, stimulating interest in Hoffmann in English language audiences.
Arvustused
Reviews'This new resource is both enjoyable and thoroughly thought-provokingand so is well worth consultation by faculty and students.' Seán Williams, European Romantic Review 'Transgressive Romanticism engages its central spatial metaphor to make Hoffmanns complex potential as a protorealist clear: expertly attuned to the forms of life and literature with which he was familiar, while always ready to subvert and think beyond them.' Polly Dickson, German Studies Review
Acknowledgements
Introduction --- Christopher R. Clason, Oakland University
I. Transgression and Institutions
1. A poor, imprisoned animal. Persons, Property, and the Unnatural Nature
of the Law in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Das Majorat. --- Alexander Schlutz, John
Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center
2. Vergiftete Gaben: Violating the Laws of Hospitality in E. T. A. Hoffmanns
Das Fräulein von Scuderi --- Peter Erickson, Colorado State University
3. Transgressive Science in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Fantastic Tales --- Paola
Mayer, University of GuelphII. Transgression and the Arts
4. E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Bamberg Theater --- Frederick Burwick,
University of California, Los Angeles
5. Transitions and Slippages of Mimesis in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Der goldene
Topf, Die Fermate, and Das öde Haus. --- Beate Allert, Purdue
University
6. Transgressions: On the (De-)Figuration of the Vampire in E. T. A.
Hoffmanns Vampyrism" --- Nicole Sütterlin, Harvard UniversityIII.
Transgression in the Märchen
7. Transgressive Play and Uncanny Toys in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Das fremde Kind
--- Christina Weiler, Purdue University
8. Attending to the Everyday: Idiosyncrasy in E.T.A. Hoffmanns The Golden
Pot --- Ruth Kellar, University of Wisconsin, Madison
9. Prinzessin Brambilla: The Aesthetic between Public and Private --- Howard
Pollack-Millgate, DePauw UniversityIV. Transgression of Reception in Kater
Murr
10. Hoffmanns Two Worlds and the Problem of Life-Writing --- Julian Knox,
Georgia College
11. Real Humor Cannot Be Captured in a Novel: Kierkegaard Reading E.T.A.
Hoffmanns Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr --- James Rasmussen, United
States Air Force AcademyWorks Cited
Index
Christopher R. Clason is Emeritus Professor of German at Oakland University. He is the editor of E. T. A. Hoffmann: Transgressive Romanticism (2018) and co-editor of Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms (2020), Romantic Rapports: New Essays on Romanticism Across the Disciplines (2017) and Literary and Poetic Representations of Work and Labor in Europe and Asia during the Romantic Era (2011).
