Discovering Dante and Theorizing Myth: The Schlegel Brothers and the Origins of the Romantic Project -- Schelling, Novalis, and the Legitimation of a Dantean Mythology -- Goethe's Dantean Mythologies of the Self and of the World -- Trespassing the Sign: Gerhart Hauptmann's Mad Flight -- Abolishing History: New Dantean Germanies in Rudolf Borchardt and Stefan George -- Thomas Mann and the Demythologization of Dante.
Summary:
"Around the turn of the nineteenth century, no task seemed more urgent to German Romantics than the creation of a new mythology. It would unite modern poets and grant them common ground, and bring philosophers and the Volk closer together. But what would a new mythology look like? Only one model sufficed, according to Friedrich Schlegel: Dante's Divine Comedy. Through reading and juxtaposing canonical and obscure texts, Dante in Deutschland shows how Dante's work shaped the development of German Romanticism; it argues, all the while, that the weight of Dante's influence induced a Romantic preoccupation with authority: Who was authorized to create a mythology? This question-traced across texts by Schelling, Novalis, and Goethe-begets a Neo-Romantic fixation with Dantean authority in the mythic ventures of Gerhart Hauptmann, Rudolf Borchardt, and Stefan George. Only in Thomas Mann's novels, DiMassa asserts, is the Romantics' Dantean project ultimately demythologized"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.