E.T.A Hoffmann - Abstract

Abstract of my thesis:

E.T.A Hoffmann was a man of many talents: a lawyer by training and profession, stage manager and writer and producer of plays in times of need, a prolific musical critic and mediocre composer, caricaturist and satirist, and above all, the writer of numerous novellas, stories and of two novels. Even during his lifetime he proved to be controversial: loved and praised by his admirers, hated by his critics, a man who lived a double life in his last years: by day as a well known and respected lawyer in Berlin, by night as the writer of his famous stories, sometimes so frightened by his own imagination that his wife had to hold his hand whilst he was writing.

Nearly forgotten in Germany after his untimely death in 1822, Hoffmann’s works were translated into various languages. In France, America and Russia he reached fame, more than in his native country, whilst in England his most famous critics Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle criticised the German writer for his supposedly wild life-style and his excessive imagination.

After a survey of reviews of Hoffmann’s works in British Literary periodicals of the 19^th century, this thesis tries to follow the development of Hoffmann’s reception in 19^th century Britain from one of his first translators, R.P. Gillies and the initial success of his fantastic and gothic writings in between 1824 and 1826, to the damning critical articles by Scott and Carlyle who accused him of licentiousness and lack of morals to the Hoffmann revival in the second half of the 19^th century when the writers such as George MacDonald became interested in Hoffmann’s fantastic writings and his idea of the dream and of the doppelganger, whilst musical critics such as Vernon Lee rediscovered Hoffmann’s idea of musical appreciation.