Published toward the end of German Romanticism, Joseph von Eichendorff’s novel
Ahnung und Gegenwart[
Premonition and Present Time, 1815] appears to present a nostalgic retrospective of aimless journeying full of songs and heterogeneous elements, combining loosely connected episodes of his own life story with intimations of how to cope with Germany’s crisis during Napoleon’s occupation (1806-15). Thus the text offers a blend of various subgenres of the novel: a
roman à clef, a novel of education (
Bildungsroman), social criticism (
Zeitroman) and the search for redemption (
Erlösungsroman) – all fused into a uniquely romantic creation. But unlike other German romantic novels, this one did not remain a fragment, perhaps because Goethe’s
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre[
Wilhelm1452 words
Citation: Hoffmeister, Gerhart. "Ahnung und Gegenwart". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 October 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14306, accessed 23 November 2024.]
