Volume of new essays investigating Kleist's influences and sources both
literary and philosophical, their role as paradigms, and the ways in
which he responded to and often shattered them.
Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was a rebel who upset canonization by
employing his predecessors and contemporaries as what Steven Howe calls
"inspirational foils." It was precisely a keen awareness of literary and
philosophical traditions that allowed Kleist to shatter prevailing
paradigms. Though little is known about what specifically Kleist read,
the frequent allusions in his enduringly modern oeuvre indicate fruitful
dialogues with both canonical and marginal works of European literature,
spanning antiquity (The Old Testament, Sophocles), the Early Modern
Period (Shakespeare, De Zayas), the late Enlightenment (Wieland, Goethe,
Schiller), and the first eleven years of the nineteenth century (Mereau,
Brentano, Collin). Kleist's works also evidence encounters with his
philosophical precursors and contemporaries, including the ancient
Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of Enlightenment
thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding, Fichte, Kant,
Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and developments in
anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of new essays sheds light
on Kleist's relationship to his literary and philosophical influences
and on their function as paradigms to which his writings respond.
