Ernst August Klingemann, Nachtwachen [Night-Vigils / Nightwatches]

Gerhart Hoffmeister (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1805

Places

Germany (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

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When Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann published his novel

Nachtwachen

[

Nightwatches

, 1805] under the pseudonym Bonaventura, he had good reasons for concealing his identity: the text presents a harsh indictment of social corruption, of lost values, and of illusory literature on the threshold between Early and High German Romanticism. With its sequence of apparently disjointed scenes that challenge social and literary conventions, the novel stands outside of the German

Bildungsroman

(novel of education) tradition. For generations scholars have devoted considerable energy to ascribing the text to one of his more (Jean Paul, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano, F.W.J. Schelling et al.) or less (Karl Friedrich Gottlob Wetzel) distinguished contemporaries until Klingemann’s authorship was…

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1727 words

Citation: Hoffmeister, Gerhart. "Nachtwachen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 November 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14237, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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Ernst August Klingemann, Nachtwachen [Night-Vigils / Nightwatches]

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