Overview

This collection of essays turns on a shift in Romantic studies from viewing wholeness as an absolute value to critiquing it as a limiting construction. Wholeness and its concomitant sense of harmony, rather than a natural given, is a construct that was assembled and disassembled, theorized and criticized, by diverse authors and artists in a wide variety of disciplines and socio-historical contexts, and instrumentalized for diverse purposes. The plurality of these constructions – that Goethe’s Urpflanze, for example, is not synonymous with Friedrich Schlegel’s universal progressive poetry – is but one manifestation of how “assembly” strives but fails to be absolute. The “other” of assembly referenced in the title suggests two divergent but inseparable tendencies: firstly, how a construction can take on the appearance of a natural given; and secondly, how assemblages of wholeness harbor within themselves their own principle of disarticulation. These two tendencies underlie the “inexhaustible” character of Romantic “gatherings”. As a construction passes itself off as nature, the natural fails to account for itself as a whole. The scope of this volume encompasses the establishment, mapping, and interrogation of assembly and its other in German Romanticism through interdisciplinary studies on literature, aesthetics, philosophy, drama, music, synaesthesia, mathematics, science, and exploration. List of contributors: Beate Allert, Frederick Burwick, Alexis B. Smith, Margaret Strair, Christina Weiler, Joshua Wilner.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert E. Mottram ,  Christopher R. Clason
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Liverpool University Press
Volume:   16
ISBN:  

9781836245032

ISBN 10:   1836245033
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   01 August 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Part I. Romantic Assembly Across the Thresholds of Theory and Discipline Chapter 1: From the Fluid to the Crystal: Goethe’s Metamorphosis and Fichte’s Science of Knowing Beate AllertChapter 2: Alexander von Humboldt, the Naturgemälde, and Ansichten der Natur: Assembling Nature between Sensuality and Science Christopher R. ClasonChapter 3: 'I cannot explain myself further on this matter': Maimon’s Perplexed Differentials Joshua Wilner Part II. Romantic Assembly of Music and the StageChapter 4: Bringing Universal Truths into Dialogue: Novalis on Leibniz’s Encyclopedistics and the Language of Nature Alexis B. SmithChapter 5: Schlegel, Tieck, and Staël: Assembling Shakespeare as Weapon in the Napoleonic Culture Wars Frederick Burwick Part III. E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Romantic Assembly of the SensesChapter 6: Romantic Reflections and Reconfigurations: Intertextual (Dis-)Assembly in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s ‘Die Abenteuer der Sylvester-Nacht’ Christina WeilerChapter 7: The Theatricality of Perception: Staging Aesthetic Education in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘Des Vetters Eckfenster’ Robert E. MottramChapter 8: Reassembling the Sensorium: Romantic Synaesthesia in Friedrich Schlegel’s Literary Theory and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Intermediality Margaret Strair

Reviews

‘For what is under review here is an outstanding scholarly achievement—a book of great clarity in thinking and presentation, of formidable, impeccable research, a monograph displaying sovereign command of her material as well as an enthusiasm that never obscures but always illuminates what it examines.’ Christoph Bode, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität ‘This edited volume of eight contributions and one introduction on conceptions of assembly in German Romanticism is useful both for those with expertise in Romanticism as well as for non-specialists with theoretical interests in either Romantic systems or the concept of assembly more generally. Many seminal concepts of Romanticism are lent new life by the representation of different methodological approaches to Romantic structure.’ David Takamura, Oxford German Studies

Author Information

Robert E. Mottram is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Whitman College. 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).

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