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Brown, Hilda Meldrum, E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Serapiontic Principle: Critique and Creativity. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006. 206 pp. + index.
Despite the copious attention E. T A. Hoffmann has attracted as one of the great storytellers of the nineteenth century, he has far less often received acclaim as a romantic theoretician until the past two decades - rather, critics usually regarded him as flighty, superficial, and inconsistent in comparison to his earlier colleagues. Hilda Meldrum Brown's study of the "Serapiontic principle," treating what she considers Hoffmann's attempt to unify some of his aesthetic principles under a single perspective, reflects a new critical direction that appreciates Hoffmann as a serious and profound thinker. Her work reveals how the Serapiontic principle serves as theoretical underpinning for, and as observable performance of, the creative process she traces in Hoffmann's writing.
Brown clearly does not intend an interpretation of the works as the main thrust of her analysis, but rather investigates the operation of the Serapiontic principle in them. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this study is its scope: instead of restricting herself to the four-volume collection of tales Hoffmann published under the title Die Serapionsbrüder (1819-21), as earlier studies have done, Brown seizes the opportunity to follow the red thread of this concept through much of Hoffmann's overall production of novellas, stories, and Märchen, from the earlier collections of Fantasie- and Nachtstücke...