Products of the Imagination
Mining, Luxury, and the Romantic Artist in Heinrich von Ofterdingen
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9852440 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matt Erlin (0000-0002-0536-7499, Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 40-58 |
| Publication date | 2007-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | German Life and Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-8777 • E-ISSN: 1468-0483 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-0483.2007.00372.x |
| OpenAlex | W2042360906 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
Scholars have long been interested in the relationship between capitalism and early romantic aesthetics. The following investigation offers a fresh perspective on this topic through a reconsideration of the figure of the miner and the representation of mining in Friedrich von Hardenberg's Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Rather than elucidating this representation on the basis of general concepts like alienation and instrumental rationality, as has often been the case, the essay situates mining within the context of the wide‐ranging late eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century debates about luxury. When contextualised along these lines, it becomes clear that Hardenberg's representation of mining is best understood as part of an effort to defend the legitimacy of literature, especially the still fragile legitimacy of the novel. Re‐framing the representation of mining in the work in this way also necessitates a re‐evaluation of other key aspects of the novel, most significantly, its negotiation with processes of economic modernisation and especially its stance toward an incipient consumer culture in which reading and literature play a paradigmatic role
Aesthetics · Alienation · Archaeology · Art · Capitalism · Epistemology · Framing (construction · Legitimacy · Literature · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Rationality · Representation (politics · Romance · Social science · Sociology · Central European national history · Classical Studies and Philology · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Law · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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