Poesie und Reflexion: Aufsätze zur Literatur

The essays assembled here (some hitherto unpublished) discuss texts and subjects taken from the literature of the Goethe Period and classical modernity. Philosophical and methodological problems are addressed alongside the multiplicity of forms figuring in the literary history of the periods in question. Both in Lessing's oeuvre and almost all of the texts interpreted here a relatively high degree of reflection is encountered. This proprium of late literary production elevates the difference between language and reality, linguistic structures and 'poeticality' to the status of a dominant issue in hermeneutic reflection.