Natur als Utopie: Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen im Kontext der romantischen Naturphilosophie

Abstract

In the thesis entitled “Natur als Utopie: Novalis‘ Heinrich von Ofterdingen im Kontext der romantischen Naturphilosophie,” the concept of nature and its many different meanings developed throughout history will first be presented with a special focus on the understanding of nature during the epoch of Romanticism and its connection to Romantic poetics. At this point, the development of the special Romantic understanding of nature will be discussed from different perspectives, including historical, philosophical and poetic. This first part is the initial step toward an understanding Novalis‘ poetics, which are investigated in the second part of the thesis. After a short analysis of the poet Novalis, the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which is fundamentally linked with the Romantic understanding of nature, will then be investigated as an exemplary representative of his poetics. The principal object of this thesis is therefore to show how Novalis’ poetics are informed by the Romantic view of nature, and furthermore, how the author employs this view within his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen in both form and content.