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- Title
'Fort in die Welt!- Nach Konstantinopel!': Das Orientbild im literarischen Werk E.T.A. Hoffmanns.
- Authors
Röder, Birgit
- Abstract
Although E.T.A. Hoffmann's works contain a number of fictional encounters between European and Islamic culture, most scholars have ignored this aspect of his writing. This essay analyses three texts - Die Automate (1815), Das Sanctus (1817) and Das steinerne Herz (1817) - and highlights those aspects of Islamic culture that, because of their affinity to Romantic philosophy, appealed to Hoffmann and his contemporaries. In Die Automate Hoffmann offers a literary response to Wolfgang von Kempelen's 'mechanical Turk', a phenomenon that fascinated intellectuals all over Europe. The reactions of the two main protagonists show that the attraction of this Other consists precisely in the way it resists categorisation and control - something the allegedly 'rational' Europeans find quite unacceptable. In Das Sanctus Hoffmann demonstrates how an encounter between Christian and Muslim cultures also impacts on conceptualisations of gender, and how the attempt to assimilate the (female/Muslim) Other to the dominant culture of Christianity constitutes an act of cultural imperialism. Finally, in Das steinerne Herz we are treated to a series of elaborate performances of oriental culture, the very artificiality of which not only calls such orientalist fictions into question, but also exposes the extent to which they reflect the needs and desires of their (occidental) creators.
- Subjects
DIE Automate (Short story); DAS Sanctus (Book); DAS steinerne Herz (Book); HOFFMANN, E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus), 1776-1822; ORIENTALISM in literature; ROMANTICISM in literature; 19TH century German literature
- Publication
German Life & Letters, 2011, Vol 64, Issue 4, p501
- ISSN
0016-8777
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1111/j.1468-0483.2011.01548.x