Stages of Enlightenment

In recent years, the traditional view of an antithetical relationship between the Enlightenment and German Romanticism, still being posited as late as the 195os, has shifted to an understanding of Romanticism as an outgrowth of tensions in eighteenth-century thought. particular interest to scholars has been the period of Early Romanticism, as the point where these two movements most closely intersect – and also start to divide.' This present comparison of Nathan der Weise and Heinrich von Ofterdingen, as quintessential examples of the periods in question, was in fact inspired by a remark in Donald Haase's review of Silvio Vietta's collection of essays concerning Early Romanticism's ties to the Enlightenment: Of course, no one is suggesting that we rename the Fruhromantiker. There are reasons for their distinct identity: Lessing, after all, could not have written Klingsohr's fairy tale (although his pleas for religious tolerance helped shape the eclectic new mythology that Novalis' tale creates) (122). In exploring the development of Romantic aesthetics from its Enlightenment roots, I shall be paying particular attention to Nathan's Ring Parable, a symbol of the eventual obsolescence of revealed religion, as envisioned by Lessing, and the Klingsohr-Marchen, as the

Enlightenment · Theology · German Literature and Culture Studies · Philosophy