The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale

Dorothea E. von Mücke

ISBN 10: 0804738599 / ISBN 13: 9780804738590

Published by Stanford University Press, US, 2003

About this Item

The emergence of the fantastic tale in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reflects a growing fascination with the supernatural, the marvelous, and the occult as the site for literary innovation. Taking Jacques Cazotte's prototypical The Devil in Love as a starting point, this book examines the genre's early development in the fantastic tales of the German romantics Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, and E. T. A. Hoffmann; the subsequent French rediscovery of the genre in works by Théophile Gautier and Prosper Mérimée; and Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to the new literary form. The literary innovation of the fantastic tale contributed to the production of a mode of subjectivity intrinsic to the history of sexuality. It arose at a moment in the history of communication when similarity and perfect openness were no longer considered the unquestioned basis of friendship or love, when the other's potentially dark secrets became seductive and fascinating.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780804738590

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale
• Publisher: Stanford University Press, US
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804738599
• ISBN 13: 9780804738590
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Dimensions: 15.24W x 2.29H x 22.86D centimeters 15.24 centimeters width by 2.29 centimeters height by 22.86 centimeters depth
• Weight: 522 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The emergence of the fantastic tale in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reflects a growing fascination with the supernatural, the marvelous, and the occult as the site for literary innovation. Taking Jacques Cazotte's prototypical The Devil in Love as a starting point, this book examines the genre's early development in the fantastic tales of the German romantics Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, and E. T. A. Hoffmann; the subsequent French rediscovery of the genre in works by Théophile Gautier and Prosper Mérimée; and Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to the new literary form.

The literary innovation of the fantastic tale contributed to the production of a mode of subjectivity intrinsic to the history of sexuality. It arose at a moment in the history of communication when similarity and perfect openness were no longer considered the unquestioned basis of friendship or love, when the other's potentially dark secrets became seductive and fascinating.

About the Author

Dorothea E. von Mücke is Professor of German at Columbia University. She is the author of Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project in Eighteenth-Century Literature (Stanford, 1991) and the coeditor (with Veronica Kelly) of Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, 1994).